Freeview and Freesat are product names.
Correct. Freeview is the UK ONLY digital terrestrial service, available via a TV aerial. It is NOT available in Spain, although Spain has an equivilent service - TDT...ie digital TV via a TV aerial
Freesat was created to help people in the UK have a cheap and easy option to receive the digital channels via satellite, useful if they were in a poor Freeview signal area. It meant almost full coveratge of the UK for digital TV without the need of going the sky route.
Freeview and Freesat carry the main UK channels, but as Freeviews reception can be limited to just the UK there are a few more channels available on there - like Dave, History, Challenge, which are not available for free on satellite but are part of the Sky subscription service.
We have a sky box and card and of course we get free to view. I can update my sky card to receive channel 5 and 5 USA. Freesat will give me the same channels but without the need for a box as the tv will have a freesat tuner installed. Therefore there would appear to be no advantage to having a freesat tuner other than I will not need a seperate box.
Freesat only carries free to air channels. 5 USA, 5* are free to view, and only available on a sky box with a sky card (a non subscirption freesatfromsky card, or a sky subscription card)...they are not on Freesat.
There are a number of channels that a free to view card gets you : some ITV1 regions, irish C4s, 3 versions of Five, F*, 5USA (and their timeshifts), Pick TV, Motors TV, Viva TV, Sony TV, Liverpool FC TV. The free view view ITV1, irish C4s and Fives are useful as they can be received on much smaller dishes than their free to air counterparts.
Presumably HD is a whole different can of worms and although the tv will be an "HD", I will still need to subscribe to get any HD channel.
BBC1HD, BBCHD, ITV1HD and C4 HD are all available free to air. Five HD is free to view. You will need a Freesat HD (for the FTA HD channels) or Sky HD (for the FTA HD channels and / or FTV HD channel) to watch the HD channels. YOu will need to subscribe if you wantto receive the Sky HD package channels.
May I ask where I find the different post codes or are they contained in the instructions that come with a new tv.
Google a post office in a town in the UK...the reciever only uses the first 3 digital of the post code anyway...
This message was last edited by satandpcguy on 07/05/2011.