Hi David,

The Freesat platform is being set up and managed by a separate company (of the same name) that has been set up by those participating (BBC, ITV etc).

I've asked around the team at R&D who are working with them on the technical infrastructure and specifications. Unfortunately it looks like the information you're after will not be widely available (at least not yet).

What I've been able to establish is that Freesat identified the need to guarantee a supply of compliant set top boxes at launch. A group of manufacturers have agreed to do so, but only in exchange for a limited term of exclusive access to the specification. I have no idea what the length of this exclusivity arrangement will be.

Personally, I would very much like to see these specs eventually opened up - we've certainly benefited from many of the open-source developments for DVB-T / Freeview. I believe Freesat are aware of this consideration, so I'm hoping it will be something they eventually choose to do.

This is as much as I have been able to find out for you. Apologies for it taking a little while.

Matt


On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:58:55 -0000, David Matthews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I don't know if this is the right place to ask but I was wondering if there was information available about the technical details of Freesat that could be used in open source projects.

Specifically, I wrote and maintain the MHEG engine that is used in MythTV. It appears that the BBC has started test transmissions on satellite of the MHEG interactive service. It's possible to view much of this using the current code in MythTV but it seems that the profile on Freesat is a superset of the Freeview profile so not everything works. Presumably information about this is available to the builders of set-top boxes but it would be nice if it could be available for open-source projects. There have also been references to the EPG information being transmitted but again there is nothing publicly available about how to decode it.

Incidentally, I've been working on a translation of the MHEG engine from its original C++ into Java to produce an application/applet for viewing MHEG offline or via HTTP. I'm rather short of MHEG test programs although I have recorded some of the carousels off air. Does the BBC have some test programs available?

David.
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| Matt Hammond
| Research Engineer, FM&T, BBC, Kingswood Warren, Tadworth, Surrey, UK
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