Sky+ HD gets Five HD

James Ollier17 March 2010

come on give the channel to Virgin Media customers as well don't allow Rupert Murdoch to control what Five does.

Howard17 March 2010

It's not that Ofcom reneged on a deal to let Five have a Freeview HD slot(they had one ready for them) - it's that Five could not commit to a launch date. Strange when almost the day after they get a spot on Sky? Agree with poster above - hope Five HD joines Virgin - they are ramping up their HD offerings nicely too - and without the £10 fee that Sky charge.

carl18 March 2010

you can get itv hd on sky hd box's now you have to set it up manually but you can not record or pause it

Pete03 April 2010

I think this is disgraceful! I was under the impression that Five was a public service broadcaster. As such, I would have expected all your services, including your HD service, would be free to air and not encrypted and given to Murdoch to increase his empire. At this rate it won’t be long before the day comes where if you want to watch HD you’ll have to pay Murdoch’s prices to get it. Sorry but you've just lost me as a viewer.

Philmike07 April 2010

Five is a business and as such goes where it can get the best return and the most viewers.

jacktheladfrost11 April 2010

So Five goes HD just in time for the end of this run of the Gadget Show? Hmmmph.

Ray Woodward03 May 2010

So presumably 'Channel TBC' will be the placeholder for Five HD then ..?

Neil04 May 2010

I'm naturally disappointed Five have not made their HD offering available to everybody FTA instead of being tied in to $ky and their ever-growing HD monopoly. Like others mentioned, then FTA broadcasters like Five should be just that, Free To Air and platform neutral! Assuming Five have cut some financial deal to be tied in with Sky for a period of time, can they give a date for when at a later stage their channels will be available on the Freesat platform as well as exclusively to Sky? Fiver and Five USA would be a welcome addition together with Five HD. Freesat now has over 1million unit sales and is growing at a healthy rate so it's only a matter of time before broadcasters wake up to the advertising opportunities this gives rise to.

Ray Woodward05 May 2010

In the real world there is currently not sufficient bandwidth available to allow either 'Five HD' or Channel 4 HD (for that matter) to be broadcast FTA. It will be 2013 (at the earliest) before either 'Five' or 4 HD can even consider going FTA ...

Neil Clark05 May 2010

Ray, Both these channels could go FTA if Sky relinquished their five encrypted transponders on Astra 2D however they choose not to. Even taking this aside, the BBC could switch their HD transponder to DVB-S2 and fit another two HD services on to it, 4HD and Five HD! SES are to launch Astra 1N to 28.2E temporarily from 2011 so further narrowband capacity could be available from next year onwards.

Iain02 July 2010

The only thing worth watching on Five is CSI and you can get that in HD on Living HD through Virgin Media anyway. So Virgin customers aren't really losing out........oh wait Neighbours.....on second thoughts never mind!