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Freesat is a FTA satellite service launched by the BBC and ITV in May 2008.

It consists of an EPG and a number of FTA services which pay for a EPG slot. Even though not much has changed as most of the channels have been FTA for years, Freesat brings some major benefits for those with and without a Freesat receiver. For a start a bunch of channels have gone FTA on the Astra 2D tight beam, including Channel 4s bunch of channels.

The reason I'm putting this information here is because i've been looking at the Freesat transponders. I hope to add information here as more is understood about the Freesat EPG. The original thread on digital spy where I posted my initial findings (I'm EuphoricaL) is here. I think it pretty neat that I was probably the first person outside of Freesat to find and look at the data :-).

Arqiva Transponder

In late 2007 Arqiva posted this which was the first indication that Arqiva would be used for Freesat distribution.

As you see in the digital spy thread, I had a scan of the transponder and found the Freesat data streams. I did this using dvbsnoop under Linux on a DM500s dreambox.

To Scan the Pids of the transponder use: dvbsnoop -s pidscan The most important pids are: 

PID found: 3000 (0x0bb8)  [SECTION: Program Map Table (PMT)]
PID found: 3002 (0x0bba)  [SECTION: Service Description Table (SDT) - other transport stream]
PID found: 3003 (0x0bbb)  [SECTION: Event Information Table (EIT) - other transport stream, schedule]
PID found: 3004 (0x0bbc)  [SECTION: ATSC reserved]
PID found: 3005 (0x0bbd)  [SECTION: Time Date Table (TDT)]
PID found: 3100 (0x0c1c)  [SECTION: Program Map Table (PMT)]
PID found: 3102 (0x0c1e)  [SECTION: Bouquet Association Table (BAT)]
PID found: 3103 (0x0c1f)  [SECTION: Event Information Table (EIT) - other transport stream, schedule]
PID found: 3104 (0x0c20)  [SECTION: ATSC reserved]
PID found: 3105 (0x0c21)  [SECTION: Time Date Table (TDT)]
PID found: 3200 (0x0c80)  [SECTION: Program Map Table (PMT)]
PID found: 3201 (0x0c81)  [SECTION: DSM-CC - Download Data Messages (DDB)]
PID found: 3301 (0x0ce5)  [SECTION: DSM-CC - Download Data Messages (DDB)]
PID found: 3400 (0x0d48)  [SECTION: Program Map Table (PMT)]
PID found: 3401 (0x0d49)  [PS/PES: ITU-T Rec. H.262 | ISO/IEC 13818-2 or ISO/IEC 11172-2 video stream]
PID found: 3402 (0x0d4a)  [PS/PES: private_stream_1]
PID found: 3403 (0x0d4b)  [SECTION: DSM-CC - Download Data Messages (DDB)]

Freesat Transponders

PID 3001 contains the Network table

If you perform "./dvbsnoop -n 1 -nph 3001 |grep Frequency:" you will get a list of the transponders as follows: 

updated 20th May 2008.
10.71420H - ITV
10.72900V - Channel 4
10.75850V - ITV
10.77330H - BBC
10.78800V - BBC
10.80270H - BBC - epg 3840/3841/3842
10.81750V - BBC -
10.83230H - ITV - epg 3840/3841/3842
10.84700V - BBC - epg 3840/3841/3842
10.89120H - ITV
10.90600V - ITV
11.22367V -     - EPG 3840
11.34300V -
11.42783H - Arqiva - epg 3000/3001/3002+3100/3101/3102
11.64200V - CSC Media Group - epg 3840
11.68077V - epg 3840
11.95350H - BBC - epg 3840/3841/3842
12.42100H - blank
12.44100V - BBC
12.52300H - epg 3840
12.56002V - epg 3840

Many of the transponders also carry the EPG on pids 3840+, as follows: 

PID found: 3841 (0x0f01)  [SECTION: Service Description Table (SDT) - other transport stream]
PID found: 3842 (0x0f02)  [SECTION: Event Information Table (EIT) - other transport stream, schedule]
PID found: 3843 (0x0f03)  [SECTION: ATSC reserved]
PID found: 3844 (0x0f04)  [SECTION: Time Offset Table (TOT)]

Channel List

To get a list of the current channels perform, ./dvbsnoop -pd 4 -ph 3 -n 0 3002 |grep Service_name

Thinks to understand.

Modify tv_grab_dvb to parse the Freesat data. This is compressed, so requires someone to figure out the compression.
More on MHEG and the download data.

Relavent Links

Digital Spy Freesat
Lyngsat 28E
Flysat 28E