Is this relating just to sky subscription channels or freesat as well?

Both.
All this relates to most UK TV channels.
UK sat TV comes from 4 satellites, each with a number of frequencies, that each carry a number of channels, free to air and subscription
3 of these satellites are being replaced over the next year or so - Astra 1n, 2a, and 2b will be replaced by 2e,2f and 2g.

No word on if / when the other Eurobird / Eutelsat 28 will be replaced - that tends to carry a lot of the "cheap" channels like CBS, shopping, foreign, god, and text channels.

oh dear just have to wait and see what we get then

Yes I guess that's the case.

We have had plenty of notice over the last two years.

Luckily I have more than enough room for a big dish but to be on the safe side I have been filling up external hard disks on my Humax with decent program material - films and series etc just in case. 2.5 terabytes so far and nearly all in HD.

I know the Internet is an option but if you are used to full HD TV on a big screen it's going to be a bit of a let down - even with a decent connection.

sorry fred but thats no so any more ...try watching this using a HDMI cable from pc to TV



http://vimeo.com/channels/hd/41499247

or those with a SKY plus box one of the good things is that you can go back to the start of a LIVE program if you come in late
Now you can do the same with BBC LIVE on the BBC IPLAYER using just your PC/laptop

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...e-restart.html

I've done that with iPlayer and there is no way that it is as good a picture as the Full HD picture from HD satellite transmissions.

Acceptable - yes. HD - no.

Also I am limited to about 2.5mb/s which is not enough.

Agh well they do say it is better for learning Spanish to watch Spanish TV rather than English, every cloud and all that

i know you cant because your bandwidth is not high,but to get HD on bbc you select it on the iplayer .....they say you need 3.5mb

But even that isn't full HD - it's 720p at a low bitrate. It's good but not as good as the original transmission.

i was not thinking of a chose but if the satellite was not there.....

sounds like whizz kids pushing out the boundaries in the hope that a few will follow them, forgetting of course that the public don't have access to the public purse

the same happened with Boo.com - race away technology the punter had no chance of emulating without a small country's budget.

Very true - my point was that what is available via the Internet at present, certainly for the free UK channels, is at a lower quality but it's certainly better than nothing.

In a few years when the bandwidth has improved due to Wimax systems or fibre optics it will become the De Facto standard.

Astra 2F Not looking good for Spain.

http://en.kingofsat.net/sat-astra2f.php

I can't get any signal at all on the above freq on the new sat with a 1,3m dish in Andalucia.

the algarve will need 2.4m ,you might get away with a 1.8 where you are,but this has been a well known fact since start of this year...

Compared to other places (east europe), it actually looks good for Spain, or rather Spain got off lightly - depending where you are!

In costa blanca north / valencia 1m dishes looks to be OK for the 2f uk beam ( ia m getting a signals on my 80cm dish!)

Costa blanca south looks like a 1.25m dish at least for the 2f uk beam.

Further south (CDS and Andalucia) bigger...for the 2f uk beam.

Note : currently this is only one frequency - carrying two test HD channels. Things may still change if they can "tweak" the signal.