Freesat it a new digital alternative free-to-air option for the United Kingdom.

Freesat, a new technology primarily supported by the BBC and ITV has been launched as an alternative to Freeview.

This Freesat is not to be confused with Freesat from Sky, a service from BSkyB, where 200 free-to-air channels are offered for no subscription.

The top frequently asked question for freesat is "What do I Need?", the answer is a box, providing you already have a satellite dish.

You may have a Sky Digital satellite dish, there is no reason why this shouldn't work with a freesat box, or television with freesat built in.

Panasonic, a very popular high definition television brand, already offer televisions with freesat build in.

Freesat has been popularised in the news as it is capable of transmitting high definition television services, including HD channels from BBC (BBC HD), ITV (ITV HD) and Channel 4 (Channel 4 HD).

Channel 4 HD is a full-time broadcaster of high definition content, while the BBC only broadcast original HD content, Channel 4 offer their full SD (standard definition) shedule via their HD service.

Currently channels of the UKTV network are not offered on freesat, these channels include Virgin 1, Dave and UKTV Gold. It is likely that these channels will be added in the future as they are owned by the BBC (50%) and Virgin Media (50%).

Freesat also boasts a greater coverage of news than Freeview, EuroNews, a popular digital news channel will be broadcast over freesat aswell as BBC News (formerly BBC News 24), Al-Jazeera England and S4/C 2.

Freeview's film channel offering is poor, they have Film Four. Freesat, however, offer Movies 4 Men (and Movies 4 Men 2), True Movies (and True Movies 2) in addition to Film Four.

Freesat's music channel offering beats Freeview, the new service has five channels (Scuzz, The Vault, Bubble Hits, Chart Show TV and B4UTV), over Freeview's two, The Hits (owned by Channel 4) and TMF (owned by MTV), both channels do not broadcast 24/7, TMF for instance is not a full time music channel, airing music related programmes - not videos and The Hits currently broadcasts teleshopping in their early morning schedule.

Scuzz broadcasts music videos in their early morning schedule, a better advertisement for a digital platform, especially as Freeview's bandwidth is limited and offers few channels compared to other services - including Freesat.Freesat.Freesat.reesat.Freesat.

---