Freesat, the downside?

Jake'sGran

I was just reading another thread and there was a comment from the poster that he has decided not to buy this "due to the negative comments". Can anyone tell me what is wrong with Freesat.?

System

I think it was more negative comments about the way he intended to configure it (splitting to 2 rooms etc) rather than the quality etc.

oldagetraveller

Jake'sGran wrote: »

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with Freesat.?

Deterioration/loss of picture in heavy rain! Otherwise nowt except some of the "dumbed down" programme content!

isofa

1. Some channels are not available on Freesat that are on Freeview,
2. You need a dish and separate decoder (unless you have a brand new tv with Freesat built in).
3. You need a separate line feed from the dish to every freesat piece of equipment too. With freeview you can just loop aerial coax leads through devices or split them up, you can't do this with satellite.
4. If you already have a Freeview TV, DVD recorder and freeview PVR, it's a complete waste of money, because you have to shell out on all these devices again with Freesat decoders built-in. Not very money saving IMO!

Read about the opinions from www.avforums.com and info on tech and channels here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freesat

When analogue is finally switched off, the signal strength to Freeview will be greatly increased too, so it might negate the Freesat benefits from people with currently bad reception too.

SailorSam

Where i am, in the Granada region it was digital changeover day yesterday.
I've had a 'freesat' box about a week now, but only for the Tv in the back kitchen, up to now the quality is great, we've had lots ofrain but nothing terrible so i can't comment on what it may be like if the weather turns.
As said by a previous poster there are lots of rubbish channels, the only one that isn't on that i watch on the 'freeview' is Dave. But as the guy who fitted it said, no doubt lots will be added in the future..

kwikbreaks

isofa wrote: »

When analogue is finally switched off, the signal strength to Freeview will be greatly increased too, so it might negate the Freesat benefits from people with currently bad reception too.

The key word here is "eventually". I currently have freeview but the transmitter is 35 miles away and there can be problems. At my new house freeview will simply not be possible so I'll be getting freesat. The alternative is to put up a new TV aerial and put up with poor analogue pictures until some time in 2011.

PeteHerts

Remember people if you have SKYHD then you can tune it into ITVHD.

almillar

Just to clarify some of the 'cons' of Freesat and 'pros' of Freeview:
oldagetraveller - yes, it's more susceptable than terrestrial TV to very bad weather, but I've found that Freeview can deteriorate too.
isofa:
2. Just to point out that this is the same for Sky (I'm not sure what Jakes Gran is comparing to...)
3. Again, any satellite system has to have a seperate feed for each signal. Also, every time you split an aerial, you split the signal. You'd have to have a very good signal to be able to split it once, and I can't imagine anyone getting away with 3 feeds of Freeview from 1 aerial without an amplifier.
And also some of the pros of Freesat. It has HD, subscription free, now and it will have BBC iPlayer soon if you connect your Freesat box to your router.
I've got both and I feel that Freesat is better, but you have to suit your own needs...

aliEnRIK

Looking on some of the av forums it seems that theyve lowered the bandwidth available to some channels which make them look quite a bit worse than if you saw them through SKY

isofa

almillar wrote: »

Just to clarify some of the 'cons' of Freesat and 'pros' of Freeview:

The OP was essentially compared to Freeview from the other thread to Freesat...

So my points are in comparison to Freeview. Mentioning Sky seems irrelevant as it's a commercial subscription service.

Some HD channels will be available on Freeview soon too.

Unless you are in a poor / non available signal area, I can't see many benefits, and if the user already has freeview equipment then it's just spending more money than you need, especially based on my other original points.

Ant946

I don't live in a Freeview area so can't really comment on the quality other than to say we have Sky and the quality is excellent (on SD and HD) - anything through an aerial is going to suffer on one of the channels if my analogue signal is anything to go by.

A strategy might be to subscribe to Sky for the min. period (I think 12m) and there's always a deal on - then you can quit and keep the hardware and effortlessly move to Freesat from sky. There are plently of sites with offers but letsgetdigitaltv.co.uk has a good selection and it's easy to understand for the non-techy types.