REAL Digital pitches September 1 launch to rival Sky and Freesat

[bassethound]

A new pay-TV satellite service for the UK will launch on September 1 as Real Digital aims for the middle-ground between Sky and Freesat.

Real Digital will be free-to-air at launch, but plans to launch pay-TV channels including a pay-as-you-go Sky Sports package.

The service will operate from the same satellites as Sky and Freesat, so will be accessible through the same dish.

Users will have a choice of set-top boxes, both sold via Maplin: a single-tuner Fortec Star HD zapper box at £160 and a twin-tuner 500GB PVR from Digital Stream at £300.

Real Digital said: "Real Digital believes you should be free to choose how long you want to pay for sports channels, so you can pay on a month by month basis.

"Compared to Freesat, Real Digital will be listing many more channels and be including a easy to use EPG TV Guide. So you will have more Free TV to watch and you'll have the option to add pay-TV channels if you want."

Real Digital's HD line-up at launch will share the same channels as Freesat: BBC One HD, BBC HD, ITV1 HD/STV HD, Channel 4 HD and NHK World HD.

Sky Sports is expected to be added at a later date, but there are no details yet as to whether it will be in HD, or how much it will cost. It's likely to be on the same terms as Virgin and BT Vision, which can offer Sky Sports 1 & 2 in HD. Real Digital will use Conax encryption.

[Larry-G]

about fecking time too, been waiting for around 2 years for this to get off the ground. should breed a nice bit of healthy competition into the uk satellite market, plus they will be using the conax encryption instead of NDS / videoguard like sky do.