| Headquarters | London, England, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Area served | United Kingdom |
| Key people | Fred Perkins (CEO) David Henry (MD) |
| Products | Direct broadcast satellite |
| Website | www.realdigitaltv.com |
Real Digital is the brand name for a digital satellite television and radio service in the United Kingdom which is transmitted from SES S.A.'s Astra satellites located at 28.2° east (Astra 2A/2B/2D/1N) and Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 satellite at 28.5°E. Real Digital also plans to launch in Ireland.[1]
Real Digital currently offer two kinds of set-top boxes, one with a single tuner and the other with a dual tuner PVR. They are manufactured by Fortec Star and Digital Stream.[2]
Real Digital's main competitors are Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media.[3][4]
Currently, Real Digital only offer free-to-air channels which have been available on other platforms for several years, however they intend to offer pay television packages by spring 2012 which will include Sky Sports 1 and 2 and a high definition version of Blackbelt TV.[4][5] Subscription packages will be available on a month-by-month basis, without a contract or minimum subscription period. Additionally, pay-per-view services will be made available. Support for the BBC iPlayer and ITV Player video on demand services has also been announced.[4][6]
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The service makes use of the same fleet of satellites as Freesat and Sky, Astra 28.2°E and Eurobird 1. This means that any satellite dish which is positioned to receive these services is capable of receiving Real Digital, with the addition of a suitable receiver. Providing the LNB (low-noise block downconverter) has sufficient outputs, the one dish is able to receive multiple services. For their proposed pay TV offering, Real Digital will use a Conax conditional access system.[7]
Before launch, the company had missed many promised launch dates,[8] which led to many believing the service would never launch.[9]