new BBC HD over satellite in the UK

[neilraymond]

This summer the BBC are going to be broadcasting the world cup (amongst other things) in HD over satellite. Apparently it's going to be MPEG-4 (h.264) whatever that means, does this mean that any DVB-S card will be able to receive it? If not, does anyone know which cards will be able to handle this?

I don't have a dish at the moment, but if I could just buy a dish/LNB and PC card and not have to get a sky box or subscription it should be good in anticipation of a HD "freesat" service.

See here for some info about the BBC service

http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2006/04/bbc_launches_hd.html

cheers

Neil

[stu8080]

One thing im sure about is that Sky cannot be recieved through DVB-S cards as Sky wont license the decoder/descrambler (dont know its real name!!).

Thats why you have to use a Sky Digibox, and if you want HD you have to pay big bucks for the service!

However, I remember when i worked in a pub we had a Norwegian satellite service (that wasnt strictly kosher) that allowed us to recieve premiership matches on a Saturday. Given the different laws in Norway this might be worth investigating they might have a HD service that can be recieved via a DVB-S card?

[stu8080]

although it seems they tightened things up since:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_t..._countries

bummer!

[neilraymond]

i don't want to receive sky, i want to receive the free-to-air channels that are broadcast from the same satellite.

the article linked above talks about free-to-air boxes such as the Humax HD CI 2000 which are able to receive the BBC channels broadcast via satellite - i want to be able to do this with a PC card (DVB-S anyone?)

cheers

neil

[neilraymond]

has anyone else got any idea about whether or not a dvb-s card will be able to receive these broadcasts?

cheers

[sub]

I dont know for sure, but its possible they'll use DVB-S2, which is incompatible with existing DVB-S card. This will give them much more bandwidth.

Twinhan are selling BDA compliant DVB-S2 cards. These cards with receive DVB-S and DVB-S2.

[neilraymond]

cheers, i'll take a look at the twinhan cards and try and find out more about the broadcast format

neil

[SimonP]

You should probably contact the BBC and ask them about it. I couldn't find any info about BBC Engineering on their web site but http://www.bbc.co.uk/digital/contactus/ will let you ask the question.