Yeah, as Steve says, it's the transition to an online only world.
Clearly, Freesat is in the crosshairs and will be the first to face the chop, then Freeview at some point later. Why make new deals with broadcasters for the platform, when it's going to be shut down soon? So, this is the start of the death of Freesat and other channels will follow as existing deals expire and are not renewed.
I do not know of anyone who has Freesat, so I am surprised this service has been going on for so long, but I suppose if you were in the Highlands and Islands and a long way away from a tv transmitter, then perhaps Freesat may have been the only free tv option for those people. But most of these areas will get upgraded to fibre optic cable and will be able to stream like the rest of us.
Well you do, me, unless you mean In Real Life . I have FreeSat in two rooms and my relatives have it as the only source for their only TV. And a friend has it too for their main set and young family. I have long been connected to high speed internet but I don't stream live channels, I don't want to.
Streaming live channels via the internet is, the method most do it by, totally inefficient use of resources. Current broadcasts send one signal and it's available to however many devices you can fit in the reception range, internet streaming, the way that most of them are doing it, is providing an individual stream to each and every device. It's daft for mainstream channels.
Freely should have been 5G Broadcast with some IP, Digital Terrestrial & Satellite mix. 5G Broadcast is both modern and efficient, and the way our neighbouring countries are going, so costs can be shared in technology scale/availability.
I don't think that Freesat will be closing anytime soon. Its primary purpose is to provide TV for those without a useable Fteeview signal.
Tiny Pop is due to go online only soon and I suspect that removing these channels from Freesat is a test to see if the 20% of people that use it will happily move online for the remaining channels before taking the channels off Sky.
Eventually Freely will take channels from Freeview, satellite or the internet and the viewer won't know or care how the content is delivered. At this point I suspect that broadcasters will gradually stop broadcasting on satellite & DTT to cut costs.
If they connect their new Smart TV to the internet the moment they unpack it and set it up, maybe. Not everyone is like that though.
I have a Smart TV. I've never connected it to the internet. No intention of ever doing so. I would only have done so if there was an issue and I know it would be resolved by a firmware update,and then I'd download it and disconnect the TV afterwords. Or I'd download it to a USB stick and never connect it directly to the internet.
When I buy any further new TVs I won't be connecting them to the internet either.
Aside from TV software/apps going out of date quickly and then being unsupported, some people don't want all their devices, TV or otherwise, connected to a network. My internet is solely for services using it when they need it, I don't want absolutely everything using it, even though I have a high speed connection. The best way to get live TV is broadcast, I'll use it until it doesn't exist any more, regardless of whether I have sufficient internet capability, which I do.
Many people use internet services of various sorts without realising what it takes to deliver any of it. Take Artificial Intelligence. It's been calculated what energy these systems use just for them learning, and it's a huge amount. Simple, average requests have been worked out and the energy used for those is ridiculous. Someone just typing in a request for fun to see what it churns out, and lots of people are wasting hours doing it at the moment from what I gather, uses lots, and for nothing at all useful to the world. The server farms for all these streaming services aren't any better. All the worries about getting us to use less energy and focusing on the likes of cars, and we'll end up not reducing our usage at all because the world's population are addicted to nonsense on the internet and are using it for stuff they don't have to.
Yes, I'm rambling off on one.
I use On-Demand services for film and TV shows, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to stream Live content via an inefficient source. I still watch a significant amount of live TV, internet delivery, even with my plenty-fast-enough connection, isn't the best way to get it.
Off I go to do some more typing. Hopefully I'm now in the zone. Life eh?