Cheap Virgin anyone?
Virgin Media’s running a five day only special customer offer - Virgin TV, phone with free evening and weekend calls and superfast broadband - all for £20 for the first 6 months.

No BT line required. Only till midnight Tuesday 20th May, at allyours.virginmedia.com

If you’re thinking of getting Freesat, and haven’t got a satellite dish, here’s an interesting loophole.

With Freesat, if you don’t have a dish, it’ll cost you £130 to get Freesat working (£50 for a basic box, and £80 for installation).

Sky Digital are offering something called “Pay Once, Watch Forever“, which offers over 200 channels, for just £75 including installation and a Sky Digibox. You also get four months of Sky’s pay-TV channels as a trial.

So, here’s what you do:

Get “Sky’s Pay Once, Watch Forever” - dish and box for £75 (versus £130). Watch the 200+ free channels plus the Sky subscription channels for 3 months, then tell Sky that you don’t want to subscribe after the trial.

You can still use the Sky box for the free-to-air channels. If you fancy moving to Freesat (for their HD service), then you’ve already got a dish installed suitable for Freesat, and a spare satellite receiver. You can only apply if you’ve not had a Sky contract before.

Until end of May 2008: There’s 10% off “Pay Once, Watch Forever” at Dixons using code SKY10 at the checkout. Click here.

A new UK digital TV service has just launched - quietly. Freesat, offering 80 channels of digital telly and radio launched on 6th May 2008. We’ve got our hands on a rare receiver and put together a quick Audio Update. We’ll have a more complete look at Freesat in the next show, but here are our initial findings. Go to http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/freesat.html

 

 FrequencyCast Update - Freesat launch May 2008 [8:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Freesat, the BBC and ITV service, finally launched today, the 6th of May.

Freesat offers 80 channels TV and radio without subscription. To get the service, you’ll need a satellite dish and a special Freesat receiver.

Channel lineup offers few surprises. Many of the channels available on Freeview are present, including Channel 4, E4, More 4, ITV2, ITV3, BBC3, BBC News, CBBC and CiTV. Five, Fiver and Five US are missing from the lineup, but are apparently expected soon. Other channels include Film 4, True Movies, Movies4Men, Euronews, Men & Motors, Wedding TV, Chart Show TV and Al-Jazeera. You can find the full list here.

High Definition: Freesat is also offering HD content. At the moment, this is the BBC HD service, but this will soon be joined by the ITV’s new HD service. Irritatingly, ITV’s HD content won’t be available to Sky’s almost half-a-million HD customers, and Channel 4 HD won’t be available to Freesat customers.

The cost: To get Freesat, you need a dish pointing in the direction of the Sky Digital satellite (Astra / Eutelsat). If you don’t have a suitable dish, installation costs £80. As for boxes, there are two types at present - a Standard Definition box (from £49), and a High Definition box (from £120). A receiver with a built-in recorder (to rival Sky+) is reportedly due in July this year.

Launch “issues”: Today’s the official launch day, but no-one’s able to actually get a receiver. There are four authorised retailers selling boxes, but anyone looking for one today may be out of luck. After a ring-around, here’s what we found:

• Argos: Five boxes listed on their website, but all out of stock. Some branches appear to have stock, especially the Bush receivers, but they’re under instructions not to sell them. A call to Argos Customer Services (0870 600 3030) revealed that the Goodmans and Bush models weren’t being sold for “Quality Control reasons”, with one online forum reporting an issue with channel reception on the Bush model. Argos are only able to sell the Humax FoxSat - but no stock in London or the South East.
• Currys: No stock. Nothing on the Currys website. We checked in with a Central London store, and were told 4-6 weeks
• Comet: No stock. Calling Comet’s customer service line (08705 425425), we were told 7 days
• John Lewis: Nothing on their website. Rumours that the Humax receiver may be due “later today” in Oxford Street

Alternatives? Free-to-view satellite TV’s been around for a while. If you fancied Sky, but not their hefty monthly fees, they also offer Freesat from Sky with 200 channels for a one-off £150. Sky also had their Sky Pay Once, Watch Forever service - 200 free-to-view channels and free hardware for a one-off £75. Neither offer free HD though

We’ll be following Freesat with interest, and covering this in our next show - don’t miss out - sign up for show alerts.

Want Sky Digital, but don’t fancy shelling out on a subscription? We’ve found a 10% off offer on Sky’s Sky Pay Once, Watch Forever service, which gets you installation of a dish, with a set top box. Normal price is a one-off £75 - but get 10% off when using voucher code Use voucher code SKY10 at the dixons.co.uk checkout.

Valid until the end of May 2008

BT Vision’s about to get some extra movie content - they’ve done a deal with Universal Studio’s Picturebox to get up to 28 movies a month, with titles such as The Bourne Ultimatum, Knocked Up, Atonement, The Kingdom and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Picturebox is already available on Top Up TV Anytime and on Tiscali TV.

The service costs £5 a month, and goes live on 5th May. More on BT Vision

The beeb’s news channel BBC News 24 is set to re-brand as “BBC News” from Monday 21st April… let’s hope they don’t change our favourite piece of music - that 60 countdown at the top of the hour

FrequencyCast special! We’ve uncovered a half-price Setanta deal relating to the Calzaghe/Hopkins boxing match at the weekend - the offer runs until Friday the 18th April. You can subscribe to Setanta for three months half price (£5 per month for the next three months), if you quote offer code 1904 when you order online at www.setanta.com.

Offer ends at midnight on Friday 18th April.

The BBC’s 7-day catchup TV service, BBC iPlayer is now available on the Nintendo Wii. Last month, the iPlayer came to the Apple iPhone, and now it’s on a games console.

To get access to the last seven days of BBC TV shows on the Wii, go to the Wii’s web browser, and type in http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer. If you don’t have the Opera web browser, you’ll need to get it from the Shopping channel.

Quality of BBC iPlayer playback isn’t great, and as you’re watching in a browser, it’s not full-screen, but it’s certainly both watchable, and clever!

The BBC and Channel 4 have added a stack of new TV shows for on-demand download via iTunes. Episodes of Torchwood, Skins, Fonejacker and Life on Mars are available for £1.89 an episode. You can also get an entire series of shows like Spaced and Black Books for about £8. Getting shows over iTunes is cheaper than buying on DVD, and they’re already in an iPod-friendly format. TV shows available from www.itunes.com.

Note that much of the Channel 4 content is available free for a PC, with Channel 4’s 4oD service.

Plans are being drawn up for “Channel 6” – a nationwide local TV service. The group United for Local Television is campaigning for a UK-wide network of local TV stations to fill the void in local TV news and content that’s not being servced by the BBC and ITV.

Campaigners include local TV operators, voluntary organisations and media campaigners, and has the backing of 126 MPs.

If successful, Channel 6 would launch before the end of 2012 the Digital Switchover

The BBC’s 7 day catch-up TV service is now available on Apple’s iPhone.

 The service is currently a beta. You can access the iPlayer from an iPhone by typing in the URL http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer from the iPhone’s browser (a little pink triange stating “Beta BBC iPlayer for iPhone” pops up.

You can only watch video when you’re connected via wi-fi - there’s not enough bandwidth over GPRS or EDGE for video.

On the subject of the BBC’s catch-up TV service - this will apparently be available to Virgin Media customers from April. It’s already available on the free BT Vision set-top box.

The seven-day catch-up service from the BBC will soon be available to Virgin Media customers, and we’ve heard that from March, you’ll be able to watch BBC catch-up TV on Apple iPhones and iTouch devices.

UK Podcast Team, FrequencyCast has released an audio podcast providing help on the Digital Switchover. This follows results of our survey telling us that 39% of our listeners and visitors aren’t ready for analogue TV to be switched off. See our press release for more.

Our “Unofficial Guide to The Digital Switchover” looks at the top ten things you need to know, and answers our listener’s common switchover questions.

 The show lasts for 20 minutes, and can be downloaded for free from our Digital Switch page

 

 Digital Switch Audio Guide [20:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Are you a Lostie? Lost returns to UK screens on Sky One on Sunday 3 February 2008 at 9:00pm. Season 4 of Lost will also be available on Sky HD.

www.frequencycast.co.uk/sky.html

Sky’s High-definition box price has dropped. Their combined Sky HD / Sky + box is now £249 (was £299). If you take out Sky HD with Sky’s broadband, Talk phone service and  Multiroom, the price drops to £199. Details on our Sky Digital page.

We’re taking a straw poll from our listeners to find out how many folk are ready for the Digital TV Switchover, to help with an upcoming podcast feature we’re planning. We’d appreciate your vote:

BT Total Broadband customers will soon be able to get TV, movies and high-definition gaming on an Xbox 360.It’s been announced that the BT Vision TV-on-demand service is expected to be available on X-box 360 consoles from mid-2008, according to an announcement by Bill Gates on the 6th of January.

Existing BT Vision set-top boxes are running Microsoft’s IPTV software. The new partnership between BT and Microsoft brings some potential new opportunties to both parties - A large collection of TV shows and movies available on demand, plus access to Xbox LIVE® on one box. Available services will include voice chat, sending and receiving text and voice messages, as well as access to Xbox LIVE Marketplace, all while watching TV. The quoted example of such integration is that of a footy fan wating a live match on BT Vision Sport having a voice chat abot the game over XBox Live, then playing FIFA Soccer with his friend after the match.

The service will be available to existing and future Xbox 360 owners from the middle of 2008, and it’s expected that BT will be selling the Xbox consoles pre-loaded with BT Vision. No pricing has been announced as yet.

More on BT Vision: http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/btvision.

Later this year, we can expect to see FreeSat launch in the UK. This is a joint free-to-view satellite TV service that’s due to offer 80 free TV channels, plus some high-definition content.

It’s due in “Spring 2008″. What we know so far can be found on our FreeSat UK page.