Sky to Launch 200 Free Channels Package to Compete with Freeview

9th June 2004

Sky are going to re-launch their non-subscription digital satellite package later this year which will include ITV1, Channel 4 and five in order to compete with Freeview to provide a larger base of prospective customers for their pay-packages. At the moment Sky offers a non-subscription digital satellite installation package, but this does not provide access to the above 3 channels that are available on Freeview, and this new package will include a viewing card for these channels, as well as access to about 200 channels. The new package will cost £150, for which you get a Sky digibox, minidish, viewing card and free installation.

A list of the free-to-air (FTA) TV and radio channels available on digital satellite without a subscription can be found here. Below is a table that compares Sky's forthcoming package with Freeview:

Channels	FTA DSat	Freeview
TV	115	26
Radio	81	21
Interactive	13	3

One of the main advantages of getting non-subscription digital satellite is that you can receive over 80 digital radio stations, the vast majority of which use significantly higher bit rates than on DAB, and therefore the audio quality of these stations is higher than on DAB.

Another big advantage of digital satellite is that because of the massive amount of bandwidth available most of the TV channels also use higher bit rates than are used on Freeview, and so the picture quality of these channels is better than on Freeview.

This move will help the Government's aim of turning off the analogue TV transmissions by 2010 by allowing people that cannot receive Freeview, or that need to install a new aerial with an alternative subscription-free digital TV package.

It's hoped that Sky will add a digital output connector to their digiboxes to allow better audio quality than from the phono outputs of current Sky digiboxes. I can't see why they've not already done this as it would provide them with an additional income stream for those with standard digiboxes to upgrade.