For most consumers, I think so.

To provide a little background, satellite signals are either encrypted (part of a pay TV package, or “Free to View” which requires a free, or low cost card to decrypt the signal) or unencrypted (or clear, or “Free to Air”). Applying this to Digital Terrestrial Television (commonly known as Freeview in the UK), you could split BBC ONE, The Hits and Sky News into “Free to Air”, and UK Gold into “Pay TV”.

A while ago all of the UK’s Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) were “Free to View” on satellite. If you had a Sky subscription, you got them anyway, but if you had Sky equipment and no subscription, you could get a Solus card, which was largely paid for by the BBC. When they removed encryption and went “Free to Air”, they stopped supporting the scheme. Without getting into the whole saga, eventually you couldn’t get a legitimate Free to View card and the only way was to get a cancelled Sky card, or turn to eBay.

In October 2004, Sky introduced Freesat From Sky. The new package was £20 for a FTV card, or £150 for a box, card and installation. A year later, the BBC and ITV announced Freesat, and some time afterwards made their own channels FTA. In the meantime, tens of thousand (if not more) viewers in the UK have been watching FTA television on boxes supplied by neither Sky or Freesat, but manufacturers like Technomate and by using cheap kits from Aldi and Lidl.

There’s no doubt that Freesat is targeting consumers who want a service similar to Freeview, but without anything to do with Sky. There’s a few interesting points though;

• Channel 4 is now available FTA, but Channel 4 HD is still only available to Sky HD customers.
• five is not available on Freesat.
• ITV HD will be available on Freesat, but not Sky, and will only be available via the red button when watching ITV.
• Sky News isn’t on the EPG, even though it’s a Free to Air channel on satellite.
• The only radio stations on the EPG are all from the BBC. The three national licences - Classic FM, talkSport and Virgin Radio - are all missing.

The line-up is a little disappointing at the moment (although most of the channels, like Sky News or Planet Rock are on satellite, FTA), and it’s a little reminder of the days of 1998 when you keyed in 103 on your Sky Digibox and were told “Press ’tv’ and ‘3′ to view ITV”. Personally I’d hang on and see how it plays out, what the on-demand services are like, what channels are added and what firmware changes are made before ringing round to find a STB.

At the moment, I’m still drawn to the Technomate TM 6900 HDas my next satellite box, but once on demand, HD and more channels on the EPG filter through, it’ll be an excellent purchase for anyone without adequate Freeview coverage or simply wanting HD. I fully understand the reasons for using an independent programme information stream, but it would be nice if we could enjoy what we have with European TV stations (like RTL, or Das Erste) and get full, comprehensive EPG data on any DVB-S equipment we care to use.