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Thread ID: 69881 2006-06-15 04:37:00 Free to Air Digital TV - will it make a difference? Rutherford (10399) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
463300 2006-06-16 10:22:00 Consider time frames:

In a year or two, Digital TV won't make much difference to most of us.
But five or ten years down the track, none of us will want to go back to analoque.
Strommer (42)
463301 2006-06-16 10:25:00 Canwest bosses and tvnz bosses both said that their will be more local programming and more news channels to look forward to but i hardly think you will see much american stuff as this is freeview and if that happened they would start charging you for it.Turns out that freeview is going to be clearer in sound and picture better than sky and more interactive content such as being able to choose which camera you want to watch a live race on say bathurst and you can choose which view you want, i can just hear the v8 fans now going vroooooomm vrooooom for that option. Hitech (9024)
463302 2006-06-17 03:16:00 Canwest bosses and tvnz bosses both said that their will be more local programming and more news channels to look forward to but i hardly think you will see much american stuff as this is freeview and if that happened they would start charging you for it.

Of course there'll be heaps of yank content, ads will pay for it of course. How much local content do you think there is? Certainly nowhere near enough to fil the new channels.
Standing_Amazed (7841)
463303 2006-06-17 06:20:00 Of course there'll be heaps of yank content, ads will pay for it of course. How much local content do you think there is? Certainly nowhere near enough to fil the new channels.

You mean you want to see more local crap reality shows??
paulw (1826)
463304 2006-06-17 07:13:00 Yes but what is the good of having a fantastic picture of a load of especially and particularly American crap but not excluding British crap as well, like they say you can't polish a tu*d.

(* = r)
You are so right,why cant we just have NZ quality programs.
It keeps all our brilliant actors in a job.
With luck English drama will catch up.
Cicero (40)
463305 2006-06-17 12:30:00 Wish we could join this Aussie Pay TV though, look at the keen pricing compared to Sky: . selectv . com/packages" target="_blank">www . selectv . com

I read somewhere a while ago that one of these networks may consider to enter the NZ market . Cannot remember which one though . . .

Isn't the problem that most satellites simply don't cover New Zealand? If you look at the globe, our part of the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean so the owners of satellites tend to place their orbits further north . That way they can deliver to greater populations .

So buying capacity on a satellite isn't easy over NZ and with only 4 million punters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . why bother?
Winston001 (3612)
463306 2006-06-19 21:05:00 What I read was that one of the PanAmSat used does cover New Zealand, that's why they were considering entering the market .

Will be a capital outlay for the supplier/end user though, it means another dish (or changing the present one to the new coords) plus a new decoder .
BoboTheClown (5652)
463307 2006-06-19 23:06:00 the problem for competion is simply trying to get mass market.

telstra (the ******eds!) tried years ago and pulled out on the launch date. the problem now is sky has mass market which means its extermly hard for a competitor to come in. it would take way to long to recoup the cost.

also in the past while there are sats that cover NZ (you will never get an NZ only sat) very few are high enough powered or have decent foot prints which would allow the use of small low cost dishes on homes. i don't know the footprint for the new ones at this stage.
tweak'e (69)
463308 2006-06-19 23:08:00 btw back to orginal Q, sat digital will be a hugr bonus to rural kiwis, it certainly makes it a cheaper optoin than installing land based aerial systems and they get perfect pictures. tweak'e (69)
463309 2006-06-20 09:03:00 I already have a free-to-air satellite TV reciever, plus two satellite dishes (one is like a sky dish and the other is about 90cm)

The sky dish recieves the Optus B1 free-to-air channels (same satelite as Sky, but no sky channels).
There are:
TV One,
TV2,
Maori TV,
DWTV (German, 50% german, 50% english)
CCTV9 (Chinese, 100% english)
NASA TV

The 90cm dish recieves the Optus B3 free-to-air channels (I believe you can use a Sky dish instead but I haven't tried).
There are:
A bunch of religous channels (3ABN, HopeTV, TBN, Daystar, JCTV, ChurchTV, GodTV)
A bunch of foreign channels (Turkey, serbia, arabic, thailand, etc)

So I can get about 20 free-to-air TV channels into my living room for the cost of a couple of dishes + a free to air satellite reciever, all crystal clear :)
Expect to pay from around $300 or so for a FTA reciever and 1 dish...

I hear rumours that TV3 and Prime are going to be free-to-air soon on Optus B1, so if that turns out to be true (is this what this threads all about??), I have all the channels I watch free, from satellites!

But then again you need Sky to watch live sport, etc.....

Cheers
forrest44 (754)
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