News

SDS would like to wish all our customers a very

a Happy New Year

We are open in the New Year from Tuesday and will be looking forward to the start of the new touring season!

We have recently noticed that the collection of Five channels are now on freesat and also being broadcast Free-To-Air. This is great news and we are working on new channel lists for our excellent satellite receivers which can be upgraded by USB. Check the Downloads section regularly to make sure you are not missing out on channels.

Last week was a great week exhibiting in the NCC show at the NEC. We would like to thank all customers that came to see and chat with us, both positive and negative! Busy all week, the show almost completely sold out on the Saturday which almost resulted in some of our excellent satellite recievers selling out too! Stars of our show were the Dual Voltage Freesat receiver and the excellent Nanosat Satellite Finder both of which really seemed to appeal to customers wanting to create an easy to use portable satellite system.

The BBC Trust has approved the freesat service for providing paid-for Video On Demand (VOD) services. Where technically possible, existing receivers should be able to access this content although it is thought that the new services will be tied in with the next generation of freesat receivers. Full details can be read on the BBC Trust Website

The BBC has annoyed some early Freesat supporters by switching the technology used to broadcast its HD channels over the free-to-air satellite service. Today, the Corporation shifted BBC One HD and BBC HD from DVB-S to DVB-S2. If your Freesat box supports the latter - and many recent ones do - the worst you'll experience is an enforced retune. But folk who bought some early Freesat boxes - the service launched in May 2008 - are grumbling that they have now lost the channels. Their set-tops don't support DVB-S. A fair few PC TV tuner cards don't either, it seems. Nor do some Freesat HD TVs. Some Sky HD users have been affected too, but, according to posters on a variety of forums, this can be sorted by deleting added channels, and performing a "new install" run. The BBC notified punters of the change through a blog posting four days ago. Not enough warning, say aggrieved readers. DVB-S2 is a more efficient modulation scheme than DVB-S, effectively increasing the available bandwidth. As yet, the BBC hasn't said what it plans to do with the extra space. It's worth noting that DVB-S2 was part of the Freesat spec from the start. When Channel 4 HD was added to Freesat in April, it used DVB-S2. Future HD channels may well do the same. ® Taken from The Register