The row engendered by the BBC unencrypting their services on digital satellite is getting worse, with News Corp threatening to sue over the likes of Buffy, The Simpsons and 24. This follows disputes with some film companies – although Buena Vista signed a deal last week with the BBC.
Basically the footprint of the Astra satellite on which the BBC’s services now sit, is more tightly defined around Britain, but not completely. By going for a different satellite, they get to avoid paying Sky millions for their encryption facilities.
This link shows the actual footprint. While it’s centred on the UK, most of France and the Benelux countries and some parts of northern Spain can also receive the signals maybe using larger than usual dishes.
The TV and film companies complain that their rights are being abused in these countries and that they can’t make as much selling them to local broadcasters in those countries since the programming is already free to air. Of course, the programming is in English, and to nearly everyone in the footprinted area, English is at best, a second language.
The various maps on the page linked show that the signal can be received quite widely. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes, although one can only laugh at the fact that it’s Sky’s owner that’s complaining the most, since they have lost vast amounts of revenue, and can forsee themselves losing more as the other terrestrial broadcasters change if they were to let the BBC go unchallenged.