Freeview TV from the UK

Anyone care to explain the new Freeview thing happening in Britain? Does it mean we can get stuff like History Channel? When is ITV1 and 2 supposed to go completely Free?

its been around for almost 3 years now. You buy a box for 50 quid and get loads of free channels. Not sure which ones but search it in google and am sure you can soon find out. One problem is if you want all the channels you need to be in an area with GOOD reception!

Its all worth it though, just to be able to watch little britain on BBC3. Actually i think thats moving to BBC1 soon

A list of channels: Freeview channels

STOP.
do not get over excited jeremy. freeview is broadcast via digital terestrial transmition, which in laymans tems means you recieve it in the uk through your house antenne therefore relieving yourself of having to buy a sat dish and sky box. you can not recieve it here. if you want to recieve programming from the uk or eire then you have to do it via a sat dish.

I get most of the channels already, but I would like to get UK History and ITV1 and 2. Will they come available on the Astra platform?

already there! but you have to pay for UKHistory and ITV 2 and 3, no way around it mate, although there is talk of itv dropping their encoding and becomeing basicly free to air on sat.

Can I buy a basic satellite kit from Real or somewhere like that and get the UK freeview channels? Does the dish have to be a certain size - i.e. a big one - or is that a myth? Anyone know whether I need a card from the BBC to receive their channels? Finally, Gideon, do you happen to know if living in a house which has no cable but offers shared satellite would allow me to plug my digibox in with card and continue receiving Premiere or would I need my own dish?

in answer. freeview is only recievable in the uk, they transmit using normal antenne just like any other bog standard normal free to air channel. you may technicaly be able to pick them up if you had a dish the size of jodrell bank (sp?) but i think thats a wee bit out of grinners standard instalation specs. the ONLY way to recieve is uk channels here is via satalite. fact no discussion end. so somebody like grinner is the person to contact, yes there are certain dish sizes you will need in order to pick up all free channels (ie channels not encoded), and you will need a dish which has enough "bad weather tollerance" - when its stomy and the atmospherics are bad your signal is weaker, and as sat channels are mpeg, loss of transmision continuity leads to so called artifacts and freezing of your reception. although i've been involved in digital television for just about eight years now, i personaly have no experience of constructing home set ups so i'd make use of somebody who has. (no i will not plug the name as i'm not getting any sponsering)

the second question is answered simply by asking your hausmeister. i presume that the dish is pointing to one of the sats used by german channels. i also presume that the set up is already there and the signal stong enough for a digibox. you may have one of teo problems. 1) your present premiers box is for cabel not sat. ring the hotline and see what they can do as i'm not sure if they'll exchange free of charge or give you a deal on another box. you can allways flog your cabel box on e-bay or Toytown. 2) the house's cabeling is not sufficent to give a good enough signal, then talk to your vermieter.

what may be confusing people here is the fact that BSkyB have recently launched FreeSat to try and compete with FreeView. FreeSat, which broadcasts via Astra 28,2E, can be installed here in Germany, whereas FreeView is, as Gideon says, broadcast only in the UK and can only be received by a digital-compatible Antenna. It is a one off fee for the equipment and installation. You will be able to receive ITV2 and ITV3 (which already transmits in the clear) as well as BBC1-4, ITV, C4, Five, BBC News, Sky News plus a few others.

BavSat can def install a FreeSat set-up for you. You need to be able to put the dish facing South/South-East. If you have a balcony facing this direction installatin will be cheaper and involve less hassle.

Available programmes via FreeSat

BBC1-4
ITV
CH4
FIVE
CBBC
CBEEBIES
BBC News 24
Sky News
ITV News
CNN International Europe
Game In TV
Pop
The Vault
Pop Plus
Simply Home
L!ve TV
Nation 217
Simply Ideas
Simply Shopping
Rapture TV
Open Access
Chart Show TV
Classic FM TV
Thomas Cook TV
Motors TV
The Dating Channel
Revelation TV
Classics TV
Information TV
Friendly TV
Fashion TV
EDTV Channel Europe
PCNE Chinese Channel
MTA International
Bright Entertainment Network
Abu Dhabi TV Europe
Islam Channel
Extreme Sports
God Channel
Life TV
Hollywood TV
Screen Shop
TV Travel Shop
And more!
BBC Parliament
Going Places
Extreme Sports
EuroNews
QVC UK
UCB TV
ATN
Overload
Pro Shop Golf TV
Record Internacional Europe
SAB TV
Performance
Channel U
Factory Outlet
Golf Channel UK
Exchange and Mart TV
TV Warehouse Select
Create & Craft
Shop America
Community Channel
Game Network UK
Travel Channel UK
Ideal Vitality
Broadband World TV

as you can see UKHistory is not on this list and i only available via subscription.

There are actually a few more than on that list above (most notably ITV2 and 3, plus a load of shopping channels). FreeSat claim to have 120 TV channels and 80 radio channels. How many of them are actually interesting is questionable however...

Freesat needs specialist (Sky Digibox) equipment and subscription card (one-off payment, no monthly costs), although for ALL BBC and Radio, along with ITV3 you simply need any old digital satellite receiver and dish (90cm or larger) and the wherewithall to install it. ITV1 and 2 MIGHT might be more easilly available early next year - they are negotiating to depart from the Sky/Freesat fold.

YL6

I am considering getting a PC with a TV tuner, does anyone know if it is possible to get English Freeview channels here in Munich, is a Sat dish essential?

gibstonni, freeview (FTV) is as previously stated only available in the UK, what you need is a setup capable of receiving Free to Air (FTA) this requires a satellite dish and receiver.

This a home connection and this...
Slingbox

Does this work with a PAL feed and where would you get it from? If the BBC are not putting a feed into the internet where is someone meant to get it from???

there is talk that the BBC are moving over to broadband soon, at the moment Sky are beta testing Skymovies and SkySport but this is only available to customers

Well the box is actually located in the UK and gets the signal via normal television broadcasting. The actual broadcaster doesnt have to put it bittonline, thats what the box does. You, located outside the UK, then access the signal, via the box, over the internet.

Not much different to getting it via p2p really, so probably not for anyone with issues against copyright infringement. But then again, its also not that different to getting sky in germany via a fake address in the UK, so I guess its all a matter of where you draw the line.

bbc broadband will only be for uk residents as internationaly all BBC programming is delt with through BBC WORLD ENTERPRISES which is diferent company altogether.. certain rights issues deny us in germany certain programmes, take radio 5's sports commentary of the premier league on saturday for example. the long and the short of it is that if you can get a dish up, you are GARANTEED everything.

thanks KSA for an explaination. the whole braodcasting rights issue is a shamble anyway. technology and the EU are slowly but surly erroding away at it all.

the way they deny you access to BBC broadband is by your IP address, I have Onspeed on my PC which means I have a British IP address as far as they can see, and can therefore access all BBC live streams, at least it seems to work that way

i know about the IP address thingie but it makes the solution all way too techie for a normal human being.

thats why i bought Onspeed its is a simple to install exe program that works in the background automatically on boot, and speeds up my broadband access by about 5x normal,

Maybe my first input was misleading, I am just fed up with only being able to see local TV and cnn(repetative news)

then the only realistic alternative as I 1st stated is get a satellite rigged up

Or steal stuff off the internet, unethical but once your willing to breach EU broadcasting laws by recieving tv intended for the UK market outside UK borders via satellite , then you have already crossed the ethical barrier.

what ethical barrier is that, it must be so obscure I missed it

it has nothing to do with the EU, its the a rights issue, and the rights are the property of the film companies and sports bodies. the EU themselves wish for an open skies policy. but basicly the thing is such a fucking mess that nobody wants to open the can of worms. the put the head in the sand and accept that expats may make an effort to recieve signals seems to work for all concerned. bbc though did lose the rights to the new series of 24 when they went over to uncoded transmition on sat.

ethicly if you set up a sat system are only depriving the bbc of their liscence fee as you watch it once and basta . if you steal from the internet you are depriving the company of revenue from a dvd, as you posses a digital copy. but as i've said many times its all a bit fucked up. 10% of sky subs are outside the designated liscence areas (UK and EIRE).

Thanks, a Sat dish seems the least techno route

also not helped by the fact that the new 2D satellite on 28,2 has a tiny footprint compared to 2A and B, soon you will need a dish the size of Munich to see Eastenders

Not quite new - it's been there 5 years (it was launched on 19.12.2000), so is already almost halfway through its 12 year life. And not really a big dish - 90cm does fine, so hardly the "size of Munich" and only 10-15cm larger than the average German dish (in fact many Germans install 90cm dual feed dishes to get Astra1 and Hotbird)...

i was kind of talking about the future as they make the footprint smaller to prevent access for out of the UK

They can't make the footprint smaller as the transponders on Astra2D are not variable focus. The current footprint is centred on UK. They could reduce transponder output power, but that is unlikely as many UK people had problems themselves when this satellite was launched and needed more accurate alignment of their 43cm dishes in any case. If they reduce further, then many would lose what little signal they already have.

whose interested in reducing the signal? astra not. bbc not. i personaly expect the whole broadband issue (as described here which avoids rights issues) and satalite issue to blow up all the rules in the next ten years.