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Why?

Well there are a huge number of households around the countryside (especially tenanted rental houses) which have a Sky Digital dish but whose occupants aren't actually Sky subscribers. Indeed, I'm one of those folks.

According to preliminary reports in the NZ Herald, those dishes will work with the proposed new FTA digital service and a suitable set-top-box will cost only a couple of hundred dollars.

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As a result, I strongly suspect that Sky TV will end up subsidising the widespread adoption of digital FTA, whether it likes it or not.

While a dish an LNB are not necessarily that expensive (which is probably why Sky leaves them in place when a customer cancels or moves), the existence of these bits of kit will significantly lower the barrier to entry for the digital FTA system.

Hell, even though I don't watch much TV, even I might be tempted to splash out and get the extra hardware necessary -- especially if this new broadcast medium heralds the arrival of some more *decent* FTA content.

Hopefully, the government will set aside a bunch of channels for public-service amd regional broadcasters, I recall a few real gems from the likes of Triangle TV when I was living near Auckland and it is often nice to see what folks are doing in other centres. By extending the coverage of such broadcasters to the entire country, they also have the potential to generate a little more advertising revenue which, even if it doesn't push them into profit, will at least help offset costs.

And for those who think digital FTA TV is just a fad, it's worth noting that the UK version (FreeView) has now overtaken conventional analog broadcasts in terms of viewers.

It's worth noting however, that NZ's proposed service is to be delivered by both terrestrial and satellite links, whereas the UK version appears solely UHF-based. That should, in theory, make ours far better suited to NZ's often rough and mountainous terrain.

What I must hope (fingers crossed) is that the broadcasts made through this satellite system have sufficient bandwidth to preserve picture quality so that it at least matches (and hopefully exceeds) that of the analog version.

Viewers of many Sky TV Digital channels will already be well aware of just how annoying the pixelation caused by low-bitrate broadcasts can be.

Sudden scene changes or areas of rapid movement tend to suddenly drop in resolution as encoding/decoding artifacts distort the image -- and that's not good!

I also hope that the sisytem includes an EPG bitstream that can be output to a PC or other device so that those with the necessary PVR capabilities can pre-program their recording schedule without the need for tedious G-Codes or manually setting start/stop times and channels.

Even after today's announcements are made, I suspect there will still be some unanswered questions:

Will FTA digital TV have a real impact on the local broadcasting scene?

Will Sky TV suddenly decide to run around and recover all those unused dishes?

Will we see a rapid rise in the amount of content available through this new system?

Will people suddenly realise how over-priced Sky's offerings are and begin to fall-back to this new, cheaper/free alternative?

Will you be buying the necessary hardware?

Will set-top boxes be the "next big thing" on TradeMe, eclipsing handbags and bikinis?

Will the criminal element start targeting the satellite dishes on unoccupied houses as a quick way to make some cash?

Tell us all, and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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