HotBird and FreeSat

In addition to Sky, residents in blocks served by our IRS systems benefit from access to up to two other satellite services – Freesat (on all systems) and Hotbird (9 wire systems only).

HotBird

Hotbird is a service carrying channels from across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, broadcast from the Eutelsat satellite cluster at 13°E. It includes over 500 free to air channels, which do not require a subscription, and roughly the same number again of subscription channels. With broadcasts in English, French, Italian, Greek, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi and many other languages besides, this is the ideal service for today’s multi-cultural Britain. More information, including full channel listings, is available at the Eutelsat website.

FreeSat

Freesat is an exciting joint venture by the BBC and ITV to provide a free to air digital satellite service. It is broadcast unencrypted from the same Astra satellite cluster at 28.2°E used by Sky, but requires only a generic satellite receiver, available at high street retailers for around £50, for no-subscription viewing of over 100 channels. While many of these channels are also available via Freeview digital terrestrial television, Freesat does not require line of sight to a terrestrial transmitter, making it an ideal solution for low rise buildings in heavily built up low lying urban areas such as the Paddington basin, where it can often be difficult to receive a strong terrestrial signal. It also carries high definition (HD) services not currently available via DTT. For more information visit the official Freesat Website.