The question is, considering the public's appetite and reception for the BBC multi 24 channel coverage of the Olympics only being available on satellite and cable services, Sky, Freesat, Virgin versus the 3 channels on Freeview, (not sure what position with BT vision is but it's also restricted) will this ultimately sound the death knell for Freeview etc?

Obviously the Olympics is a rather special situation where the viewer interests are varied and divided, plus there is the opportunity to provide particular specialist feeds.

However must admit that if I'd been restricted to Freeview during the last two weeks my enjoyment of the event would have been distinctly diminished. On the other hand, seeing as I'm in an area where we don't get the full set of Freeview channels, would it have been a case of not knowing what was being missed?

I have a feeling that given the satellite platform has coped with 24 extra channels, technically 48 on Sky 24*SD and 24*HD, (not sure about 3D) plus the ability to live stream over broadband, I'm thinking the Freeview platform is significantly damaged going forward. Or will Freeview survive simply by providing the main broadcast and then rely on people who want to see other stuff streaming live over broadband?

We see on the F1 racing where people are watching the live transmissions, also taking feeds from various places F1, McLaren and so on, plus posting on PH and elsewhere. The same has been experienced widely during the Olympics, with people discussing things on sport specific websites, plus the usual wider Facebook and Twitter posts.

NBC coverage for example has been completely restricted to where US athletes are partaking, and pretty much when they only have a chance. Been desperately poor frankly.

After the disaster that was the Jubilee river pageant, will the BBC realise the opportunity afforded them by the Olympics, realise what they have acheved and that it could be a turning point.




Aside:- The above is despite the dire nature of Trevor Nelson's input during coverage of the opening ceremony. Muppetry at that level will take time to turn round, if only as long as the time to issue a P45.

I had to retune my television upstairs to get the new channels. Basically they broadcast the feeds as different channels.

it seems not link and link2

also not everybody has broadband coverage / internet access which allows live streaming in case some of you haven't noticed.

They only have limited bandwidth on Freeview - it was already near capacity and the BBC are doing things like using spare parliament channel space for all-day BBC3. But even then, all the popular Olympics stuff is on the Freeview channels - I know a lot of people who've not strayed beyond BBC1/2/3 this last couple of weeks. They cover all the mainstream interests and british medal hopes - most people aren't fussed about watching every fencing bout, or every equestrian jump.

We're really back to the situation we had before in the analogue days - don't pay and you get a load of free-to-air stuff via an aerial, or pay and get more stuff via cable or satellite. Just with an extra 0 on the number of channels available.

Thanks for that link, very interesting.

So they confirmed that not everything was on the red button, albeit everything was available online in addition to satellite. Plus freeview will continue to provide the mainstream channels in a cost effective way, but as soon as there is an infrastructure to cope with alternative means of delivery then people will shift fairly rapidly, but that is some years ahead.

I've got a freesatHD box and all the extra Olympic channels weren't watchable as they kept stuttering and freezing and that's in an area with an OK signal.
Strangely the ordinary BBC HD channel played fine.

I don't see how the standard platform could have it's death knell sounded.

I can imagine 3D adds a lot to the sailing - it's so difficult to judge the relative positions of the boats on normal TV.

I don't have Sky,Virgin or whatever and have seen everything i wanted to on

BBC1,2,3 ,i haven't even used the red button.

All the major events have been on 1 or 2.

I look at it the other way around. For me, I wonder what value paid TV services like Sky offer over what you can get for free.

If you want high quality professionally edited sports programs in HD that cover everything that 99% of viewers want then the BBC Freeview service has been ideal. I don't want to be jumping around multiple channels trying to watch everything. I want someone to edit it for me into a continuous sequence I can watch. A couple of times I've found two channels broadcasting something I'm interested in. I end up jumping back and forth and not enjoying it as much.

For the few specific things I wanted to hunt out due to missing them, wanting to watch them again or just because it was a minority interest, I've gone online. iPlayer has been ideal for this and provides content in a way that Sky will never match (even on my 900Kb connection).