[Nick Harvey]

Sky have now confirmed that BBC One South HD goes live on Tuesday 24th.

helpforum.sky.com 

[Jimbo2022]

That should mean Freesat switches over on Monday 23 Jan.

[ASnep]

Wouldn't we have gotten some form of announcement from the BBC or Freesat if they switch Monday? The hdsatelliteupgrade.co.uk site hasnt't been updated yet either.

[Transmission]

Sorry if I've missed this - obviously a lot is happening with satellite at the moment but has there been any word on Freeview? I think it was promised by spring as well but I don't know if there's been any further information since then.

Looking forward to no longer having to scramble for the remote when the red screen comes on.

[Jimbo2022]

Phone number is not live yet either.

Freesat always switches the day before sky because Freesat rides piggy back on Sky but it's home transponder 11426H is entirely separate.

[Neil Jones]

Freesat always switches the day before sky because Freesat rides piggy back on Sky but it's home transponder 11426H is entirely separate.

I think what you mean to say is Sky and Freesat use the same infrastructure - the satellites. There is no "piggybacking" as such, its the same set of signals. There isn't anything different signal wise between Sky and Freesat - if you can get one you can get the other.

[Jimbo2022]

Freesat always switches the day before sky because Freesat rides piggy back on Sky but it's home transponder 11426H is entirely separate.

I think what you mean to say is Sky and Freesat use the same infrastructure - the satellites.  There is no "piggybacking" as such, its the same set of signals.  There isn't anything different signal wise between Sky and Freesat - if you can get one you can get the other.

Yes that is what I meant sorry.

[Stooky Bill]

There is a degree of piggybacking with Freesat, the bouquets on 28.2 are primarily for the Sky platform. If you look at the network name on the transport streams it says BSkyB, the standard DVB metadata is all Sky platform data, after all it was there first

When Freesat came along they had to add their platform data as an add-on on those services that appear on Freesat. There's two EIT's (event information table) on Freesat services, one for each platform.

[i.h]

I gather that this is more a quirk of the way legacy Sky boxes work, that it must be transmitted in that way for it to be receivable on a Sky box. It doesn't seem to be the case in Italy (which has used similar legacy boxes to Sky UK) or Germany, so presumably Q doesn't need it & the much more open nature of 13E and 19.2E means they could never do it anyway.

And it's not as if Freesat would want to push to change it, they're quite happy with their own proprietary EPG data as it provides a way to enforce their licensing model with the manufacturers

It's still hard to claim piggybacking when the BBC uplink their own signals to a BBC owned transponder on an SES owned satellite. Even if it passes through a Sky owned mangler somewhere on its way up.

[ASnep]

Yes, I think it was discussed on one of the old places way back when that the network name has to be "BSkyB" for older Sky boxes. Basically sort of a cheap way of locking the boxes, so they only will display channels approved by Sky.

So I wouldn't call it piggybacking, it's more of a case of working around Sky's quirks