John Lewis, one of the UK's largest online and high street retail chains, has apparently confirmed that the launch date for Freesat in its stores and online will be May 6th 2008.
The news was reported today on www.joinfreesat.co.uk.
However, a spokeswoman for Freesat's London PR agency, Firefly, says the official launch date for Freesat has still to be confirmed.
John Lewis says it will be selling the HD receiver for a price of £149, plus optional £100 installation. But there's no news on whether this will be a Grundig or Humax box yet.
And surprisingly it would seem that John Lewis and its partners will be working with Sky to roll out the new service, as Freesat does not have its own installation service agreed yet.
Humax is expected to release its new Freesat HD receiver, the Foxsat-HD, to coincide with the launch the launch of the Freesat service on May 6th.
The specification for the Foxsat-HD box is as follows:
- Receiving HDTV signals (MPEG-4 AVC/H 264 and MPEG-2)
- Under 1w power consumption in standby
- HDMI digital interface for transmission of picture and sound
- Simultaneous playing of transmissions over HDMI, YPbPr or Scart
- Easy installation and operation
- Resolution format: 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i
- DVB-S2 and DVB-S compatible
- Ethernet support
- Full colour, high resolution electronic programme guide
- Dolby digital audio output
- Automatic software upgrade via satellite
- Improved SDTV on a HD LCD TV
- Audio description / One-touch subtitles
- Dimensions (Width x Height x Depth): 28 x 4.5 x 20cm
- Weight: 1.5kg
Technorati Tags: Freesat, Humax Foxsat-HD, John Lewis
