Momentum continues to grow around the Freesat service in the UK, which is rapidly becoming Europe’s fastest growing TV service. Freesat is a free to air satellite TV service, and both France and Italy also have similar services, all based on DVB-S technology. However Freesat is already growing at 100,000 homes per quarter, and that’s with limited device availability and under 100 TV channels. There are new channels signing up every day, CNN signed up last week, and Freesat says it expects to deliver 200 channels, many of them in HD.
This week Sony has told local satellite TV web site, What Satellite, that it plans to enter the fray and add Bravia class TV sets with Freesat tuners to the eco-system by Christmas. The early equipment suppliers were presumed to have some kind of exclusivity for around six months, maybe more, and Sony said the set would be out by the end of the year, no sooner.
The same source also said that Sony would wait for DVB-T2 chipsets to become available and enter the market for HD Freeview (UK’s free to air terrestrial service) as well, which is due for launch during 2009 or early 2010.
Initial products were out only from Panasonic, LG, Humax and Alba brands, while the majors, in Sony, Samsung and Toshiba stood on the sidelines. The Sony move will almost certainly trigger similar steps by Samsung and Toshiba, and this Christmas sign up will likely double on the back of increased device availability and just more noise.
At first the service was described as amateurish and poorly thought out by rivals, but already it’s the fastest growing TV service in Europe ad the cheapest way to get HD content.
Freesat was launched by the BBC, with the co-operation of the leading UK independent TV platform ITV, and this is pretty much the formula which triggered the success of the DVB-T based Freeview which now reaches almost 50% of the UK’s 24 million homes.
This DVB-T formula was then copied throughout Europe and has spread DVB-T through almost 40 countries. If the same communities look to the BBC lead on Freesat, then this could become another global phenomenon.