New proposals drawn up by struggling commercial broadcaster ITV could bring about the biggest shake-up in UK TV for many a year.
ITV sees one solution to securing it's long term survival being a super-merger of itself with the other two public service broadcasters Channel 4 and Five.
Both of these companies have also been experiencing tough times of late, with on-going discussions of 'top slicing' the UK TV licensing fee to prop-up Channel 4. There has also been talk of Channel 4 (a state-owned commercial PSB) merging with BBC Worldwide or Five to help balance the books.
This latest proposal however would see the creation of a third TV 'superpower' in the UK, alongside Sky and the BBC.
'ITV Forty Five' would control up to sixty per cent of the UK television advertising market and therefore become a major player, possibly threatening BSkyB advertising revenues and putting further pressure on smaller independent channels.
The plan would be sold to regulators OFCOM on the basis of the combined company being able to 'compete' directly with the BBC (whose funding model is seen as outdated and unfair by many) and would also be able to re-commit to enhanced levels of regional news and children's programming - a base level of which is required under the public service broadcasting rules.
Fulfilling the public service broadcasting requirements of quality in-house and local content has been a millstone around the TV companies' necks of late, as financial pressures have mounted and advertising revenues have shrunk, partly due to the advent of new media alternatives and of course the current depressed economic situation.
Is this the perfect solution for all concerned, or is this rolling up of the British TV market a step too far?
Temporarily Free To Air Satellite TV channels pop up all over the place from time to time. This can be a great way to enjoy a load of different satellite TV free of charge, and without falling foul of the law.
For example, if you can get a suitable dish round to 43.0° West at the moment, there is a whole transponder transmitting in the clear.
It's normally encrypted in Irdeto 3, but right now it has a load of movie channels and several general entertainment channels FTA.
It's been like this for several days, but these things don't usually last very long. The point is that you have to enjoy them while you can. When they encrypt, you move on to the next set of open channels!
The temporarily free channels on the European beam of Intelsat 3R (43.0°West) can be found on the following transponder - which is an easy catch in the UK with just a 60cm dish:
12658 MHz, Vertical polarisation, Symbol Rate 28670 and FEC 2/3.
If you don't understand what all this mumbo-jumbo means, pop in to our Satellite Forum and ask.
Currently available channels include Xtreme, MGM, CineStar, Cinematik, Dark (turns into Canal 18 adult channel at midnight GMT), Kidsco, Buzz, Natura, Somos and Pacha TV. Most of these have original (usually English) audio, and the better movie channels don't even have subtitles.
See if you can get a look at these while they're still available. They've never been available before AFAIK. You can see loads of daily updates to channels around the satellite arc, by dropping into our "Channel Updates" forum when you're passing.
ITV’s executive chairman Michael Grade has warned against the growing trend of broadcasting endless foul language on TV - particularly before the 'watershed' in the UK (9pm).
Grade was speaking with the hindsight of having seen the fallout from last week's furore concerning Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.
"This is nothing new," said Grade. "I've been at the receiving end when I was at Channel 4 to drop Brookside, because it was a 'bit common'. Same with The Word at Channel 4.
There is always this tension between generations. I remember people’s horror at The Young Ones on BBC2, and Alf Garnett (on BBC1)."
There really does seem to be a drawing of a line in the sand regarding this issue. What do you think?
Have things really gone too far, or are the men with the seven-figure salaries just pretending to uphold some long-expired moral code?
We've not been having the best of times recently with the reliability of the site here at NoSky, and things got so bad this week that we had to act.
Yesterday saw the migration of NoSky to a superfast and reliable (hopefully!) server based on a Tier 1 network here in the UK. That's a network that connects directly into the backbone of the Internet without having to be routed through endless leased datalinks and secondary providers. We now have huge bandwidth capacity and six times the storage space too!
It's looking good so far, but we would ask any visitors that do encounter residual problems (on any of the various components of the site) to report them on the main forums.
Next week will see a radical cosmetic overhaul of the whole website, with a new layout, new colour scheme and where each sofware package employed will be upgraded to the latest version.
We hope you find NoSky easier and less frustrating to use over the coming months, and that all the hard work behind the scenes pays off.
There's a great new gadget available to us satellite nuts. In fact, it may be of more interest to non-satellite enthusiasts, i.e. the 'casual' satellite consumer.
Why do I say that? Because it's not necessarily bleeding-edge technology, but it is terrifically innovative.
The killer specification? Size.
Just fantastically compact and simple, it's a satellite receiver built into an oversized SCART plug!
Yep - it's that tiny. There isn't much information available yet, particularly in the way of reviews etc. but some basic details are reproduced below.
It's available for around £70 from online retailers such as Card Mania.
This could be an ideal addition to TV's owned by campers & caravanners for example, or maybe for folks who just have too many boxes under their TV...
If anyone tries one of these, perhaps you could let us know what you think of it on our forum. What is the tuner like? What about the OSD/menu system? What satellites does it come pre-programmed with? What is the video quality like?
Information:
An out-of-sight solution for digital satellite TV reception. This SCART connector has a in-built satellite receiver! Just connect to your TV and use the supplied remote to navigate through the channels.
Features:
- MPEG 2/DVB satellite TV/radio reception - 4000 channel capacity - Plug and play installation - Ready for one cable SKYWIRE/UNICABLE - DiSEqC 1.0 - Multi-language OSD - Electronic Programme Guide - Event timer - Parental control - Auto PAL/NTSC switching - Teletext/Subtitles - Automatic channel search - 6 favourite lists - Software updates via satellite - Remote control and remote eye included
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It's normally encrypted in Irdeto 3, but right now it has a load of movie channels and several general entertainment channels FTA. 
If you don't understand what all this mumbo-jumbo means, pop in to our 