Sky Digital is the brand name for British Sky Broadcasting's digital satellite television service, transmitted from SES Astra satellites located at 28.2°E and Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 satellite at 28.5°E.

BSkyB's analogue broadcasts ceased in 2001, so nowadays the service is sometimes marketed as just Sky.

History

Sky Digital was officially launched on 1 October 1998, although small-scale tests were carried out before then. For the first time, BSkyB used the newly-launched Astra 2 satellites, which have since come to broadcast exclusively to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. At this time the use of the Sky Digital brand made an important distinction between the new service and Sky's analogue services. Key selling points were the improvement in picture and sound quality, increased number of channels and an interactive service branded Open. Sky Digital competed with the ON Digital terrestrial offering.

New Astra satellites joined the position in 2000, and BSkyB increased the number of channels available to customers accordingly. This trend continued with the launch of Eurobird 1 in 2001.

In recent years the Sky Plus (Sky+) was launched. This PVR with internal hard drive allows viewers to pause live television and schedule programs to record in the future. There is also speculation that Sky are planning HDTV services.

Technical information

Sky Digital's broadcasts are in DVB-compliant MPEG-2, with the Sky Movies and Sky Box Office channels including optional Dolby Digital soundtracks for recent films, although these are only accessible with a Sky+ box. Interactive services and 7-day EPG use the proprietary OpenTV system, with set-top boxes including modems for a return path. Sky News, amongst other channels, provides a pseudo-video on demand interactive service by broadcasting looping video streams.

Provided a universal Ku band LNB (9.75/10.600GHz) is fitted at the end of the dish and pointed at the correct satellite constellation, most digital receivers will receive the free to air channels. Some broadcasts are free-to-air and unencrypted, some are encrypted but do not require a monthly subscription (known as free-to-view), some are encrypted and require a monthly subscription, and some are pay-per-view services. To view the encrypted content a Videoguard equipped receiver (all of which are dedicated to the Sky Digital service, and cannot be used to decrypt other services) needs to be used. CAMs are not available.

See also

• British Sky Broadcasting

External links

• Sky.com - Official Site
• Digital Spy: Satellite news and information
• Sky cards for Europe