Speaking at this years BADA (British Audio-Visual Dealers Association) Conference, Richard Lindsey-Davis commercial development director of Freesat hopes to offer the BBC iPlayer on its platform from 2009. The potential for streaming audio and video, and on-demand services hopes to be achieved as well.
Richard Lindsey-Davis also commented another three Freesat equipped Screens are due from Panasonic later this year, and he is in discussions with other manufacturers including Sony and Samsung about launching Freesat models to improve the availability of freesat screens.
Freesat admitted at the launch in May that its new subscription-free satellite TV service had been hampered by supply problems with the first batch of set-top boxes. The commercial development director also admitted that he delayed the launch of the first high-definition set-top boxes from the Alba Group, the Bush BFSAT01HD, Goodmans GFSAT200HD, and the Grundig GUFSAT01HD “because the standard-definition picture was so awful. The standard definition output on the Alba boxes wasn’t as good as it should have been and was not as good as that on the Humax Foxsat-HD box. Alba are trying to improve it. It wasn’t something they had thought about they assumed people wouldn’t use it.”
Richard Lindsey-Davis also hopes that one day BBC and ITV will have full HD content but the cost involved are huge sums of money with all TV sets/studios needing to be improved.
The company is also in discussion with Apple and Microsoft about the possibility of delivering Freesat services via a Media Centre computer.