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ITV 1 Scrambled?


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In essence what has appeared to happen is that ITV (and others) have run out of space on Astra 2D,  the only satellite with a sufficiently tight footprint to persuade those oh-so-precious rights holders to permit unencrypted stuff to be broadcast,  in the mistaken belief that the signal doesn't stray far outside the UK  (we of course know otherwise).

ITV are thus - and it is truly unbelieivable that this has come to pass - forced to go back to Sky and beg them to allow ITV to pay for some sub regions to be encrypted (allowing them to shunt these versions onto 2A/B/C),   hence if you have a Sky box and card you won't notice the problem. 

Sky are squatting on a number of transponders on 2D which they leased in good faith and are delighted not to have to give up just to make ITV's and other's lives easier - if Sky could be persuaded to move their 2D stuff to 2A/B/C then there wouldn't be a problem for ITV/C4/C5 as space would appear on 2D.   Sky not unnaturally want to obstruct freesat as much as possible and regain a revenue stream for the costs of Videoguard.

It is all very reminiscent of little boys in a playground squabbling over territory,  the sad bit is the more ITV have to pay for encryption (which they thought they'd escaped from for good) the less there is for quality programmes.

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Paul, Martin is obviously out enjoying himself, but what you call the 'official' UK HD boxes cope with the Channel 4 HD issue in the same way as Freesat From Sky works (as far as I know) it's scrambled but non-subscription. So only a Sky HD box will receive it. The last time I looked the Channel 4 HD service is not on freesat.

Regards - Tim

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.....out visiting the sick - a French friend has ended up in Perigueux hospital following a minor heart attack;   seems to be doing OK.

CH 4 SD s only FTA after they thought of the wily fiddle that duplicates their own 2D feed with the Sky versions (on 2A/B) that they have contracted to continue until the autumn.   I assume that ch 4 HD is up against the same problem of lack of capacity on 2D as everyone else.   So as Tim says there's presumably no ch 4 HD on a Freesat box,   just as there are no ITV scrambled subregions (the ones that are scrambled anyway....)

I hope to acquire a couple of Freesat boxes in the next two weeks so will be able to have a play and report back.

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