About time! Dave was the one channel I could never understand not being on the platform (I know, I know, contracts and things) but it's nice to see it finally appear.
Was going to make a thread before realising there was one!
If anything, it narrowly closes the gap between Freeview and Freesat, considering that the channel lineup has now become similar with the additions of Quest & Quest Red, and soon Dave and Home. When it does happen, it leaves the Sony Movie Channel as one of the only Freeview channels absent on Freesat.
It's excellent to see Freesat viewers finally receive the channel - very long overdue.
A bit off-topic, but there have also been rumblings of ITV Encore's encryption on Sky being sporadically lifted and then put back on.
This is a good move, and it highlights just how weak Sky's channel offering is compared to Freesat. Sky 1 and Sky Living are about the only strong offerings that Sky have in the non-premium channels or multi-channels market. Most of the others could be on Freesat for all the value they really provide to the Sky platform.
Sony really are the weird ones here though as SET is available on Sky, but they're not getting any subscription revenue from it, so it really just seems that Sky are deliberately blocking SET from being on Freesat and Sony are letting them do it, instead of either being an actual part of the package, and getting some money from it, or increasing their footprint in terms of potential viewership, by going FTA, not FTV, and getting onto Freesat.
Excellent news that Dave & Home are coming to FreeSat. Looking at the channel list I see that Really, Yesterday, and Drama are now also available, something which when I last looked (albeit months ago) they weren't.
The lack of the UKTV channels was one thing that had put me off considering FreeSat over Freeview or Virgin Media. With these channels now added and on demand catchup services available via a broadband connection I may be tempted to switch in the near future.
This is a good move, and it highlights just how weak Sky's channel offering is compared to Freesat. Sky 1 and Sky Living are about the only strong offerings that Sky have in the non-premium channels or multi-channels market. Most of the others could be on Freesat for all the value they really provide to the Sky platform.
There's still a lot of strong channels on the Sky platform that aren't on Freeview/sat, the Discovery
Channels and most of the documentary section for example, and the music offering is better if that's your sort of thing too.
If anything it brings Freesat further towards being like the full Freeview offering. If you're in an area that doesn't have COM 7 & 8 you can have all the HD content plus the likes of Dave on a dish
This is a good move, and it highlights just how weak Sky's channel offering is compared to Freesat. Sky 1 and Sky Living are about the only strong offerings that Sky have in the non-premium channels or multi-channels market. Most of the others could be on Freesat for all the value they really provide to the Sky platform.
There's still a lot of strong channels on the Sky platform that aren't on Freeview/sat, the Discovery
Channels and most of the documentary section for example, and the music offering is better if that's your sort of thing too.
Most of the Discovery Channels' new material is made in the US, not the UK. Most other channels are exactly the same, mostly repeats, and what new stuff there is made in the US. Sky 1 and Sky Living are about the only channels that do do new stuff that is UK produced. Yes, they do a lot of new imports too, but they have a feeling of being stronger than most other channels. Even Discovery's channels pretty much don't feel like they're on a different level from channels like Dave, or even the CBS channels.
Multi-channel pay TV might not be as good as it used to be, but there's still a decent amount of channels that are worth paying for. Sky Atlantic, Fox UK, Comedy Central, Sky Arts and even Sky1 which has new commissions.
However, Sky and Virgin still have the upper hand with HD versions of most UKTV channels behind the paywall.
Sky 1 and Sky Living are about the only channels that do do new stuff that is UK produced.
Sky Living doesn't commission any new UK shows and hasn't for a few years.
There's been a fairly sizeable increase in the number of UK commissions from Discovery, Nat Geo, MTV, Comedy Central, Gold and W so there's a still strong market for linear pay TV.
Multi-channel pay TV might not be as good as it used to be, but there's still a decent amount of channels that are worth paying for. Sky Atlantic, Fox UK, Comedy Central, Sky Arts and even Sky1 which has new commissions.
However, Sky and Virgin still have the upper hand with HD versions of most UKTV channels behind the paywall.
The key ones are all on Now TV at a fraction of the price of the basic Sky package.
Worth noting that UKTV still haven't put W, GOLD or Good Food out of the paywall, which suggests there's still some revenue making from the contracts with Sky and other providers by not entirely relying on advertising and sponsorship as with their free portfolio.
I invested in a very nice new Humax freesat box, reliable, nice to use and gives me great satisfaction that I'm not making the Murdochs richer than they are already.