Freeview

Freeview is a free-to-air digital television service in the United Kingdom broadcast from terrestrial transmitters using the DVB-T standard. Launched on October 30 2002 at 6am, it took over the DTT licence on four multiplexes to broadcast from the defunct ITV Digital which itself replaced ON Digital.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Unlike ITV Digital and the cable and satellite digital TV services, it offers no subscription, premium, or pay-per-view channels. All that is needed to receive the Freeview service is a set-top box costing around ?30 to ?100, or a new television with an integrated digital tuner. An annual television licence fee is levied for the service, though the same fee is also needed to watch analogue channels.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Freeview consortium consists of the BBC, Crown Castle UK and British Sky Broadcasting. The service broadcasts free-to-air television channels, radio stations and interactive services from the BBC, Sky, and various other broadcasters. In March 2005, ITV and Channel 4, joint owners of multiplex 2, were invited to join the Freeview consortium http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds19874.html http://www.dtg.org.uk/news/news.php?id=729.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In addition to Freeview proper, a subscription-based service, Top Up TV, launched in March 2004 using unused channel space. The Top Up TV service is not a part of the Freeview service; it runs alongside it on the DTT platform. Additionally, services on Multiplex 2 (Digital 3 and 4) and Multiplex A (SDN) are technically not part of the Freeview service, although they are often advertised as being part of Freeview. The Digital Network Group, made up of all the multiplex owners, is responsible for co-ordination between these services.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the end of 2004, it was reported that over 5 million households in the UK have Freeview, making it the second-most popular digital TV format in the UK.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Free-to-air: Free-To-Air is a term regarding transmission of unencrypted (or "unscrambled") television and radio over satellite. The term is often used with digital satellite receivers ("FTA Satellite" receivers) intended to receive unencrypted DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcasting--Satellite) programming. To recei...

Digital television: Digital television (DTV) uses digital modulation and compression to broadcast video, audio and data signals to television sets....

DVB-T: DVB-T is an abbreviation for Digital Video Broadcasting ? Terrestrial; it is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first broadcast in the UK in 1997. This system transmits compressed digital audio, video and other data i...