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**Chris** · 05-11-2009, 11:31

Yes, they all have ethernet, even the cheap-as-chips Goodmans SD box I bought for the in-laws' holiday flat just over a year ago.

I think the problem is, from before they launched Freesat they knew they wanted the iPlayer on it but they didn't know how they were going to do it. About all they could predict was that it was going to require ethernet. It seems that they've been casting about looking for a solution and now they've settled on something that allows them to do what they want, at the expense of ignoring the SD kit.

I don't think the BBC could be seen to be trying to drive sales of any particular kind of box as they would risk getting in trouble with the Trust over commercial activity. As it happens, IIRC comfortably more than 50% of all Freesat boxes sold so far are HD anyway. It really does seem to be a happy coincidence that the Freesat box specs (which are set and enforced very strictly by the Freesat consortium) only force D-Book 6.1 with MHEG5-IC into the HD boxes. This could be for all sorts of reasons I'm not going to pretend to understand, but I would speculate that there are hardware constraints - the cheapest SD boxes are very, very short of memory. Waiting for the EPG to load and populate on my Goodmans box is like pulling teeth.

05-11-2009, 11:31	#10
Chris Trollsplatter Cable Forum Team Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: North of Watford Services: Humane elimination of all common Internet pests Posts: 37,004	Re: Virgin loses iPlayer exclusivity Yes, they all have ethernet, even the cheap-as-chips Goodmans SD box I bought for the in-laws' holiday flat just over a year ago. I think the problem is, from before they launched Freesat they knew they wanted the iPlayer on it but they didn't know how they were going to do it. About all they could predict was that it was going to require ethernet. It seems that they've been casting about looking for a solution and now they've settled on something that allows them to do what they want, at the expense of ignoring the SD kit. I don't think the BBC could be seen to be trying to drive sales of any particular kind of box as they would risk getting in trouble with the Trust over commercial activity. As it happens, IIRC comfortably more than 50% of all Freesat boxes sold so far are HD anyway. It really does seem to be a happy coincidence that the Freesat box specs (which are set and enforced very strictly by the Freesat consortium) only force D-Book 6.1 with MHEG5-IC into the HD boxes. This could be for all sorts of reasons I'm not going to pretend to understand, but I would speculate that there are hardware constraints - the cheapest SD boxes are very, very short of memory. Waiting for the EPG to load and populate on my Goodmans box is like pulling teeth.