How technology is sold to the public. Freesat vs Freeview

As any marketeer knows there any many ways to sell technology to the general public, often the feature touted may not be the best feature about the technology. It gets very interesting when one observes how technology innovations are marketed to the general public.

Here in the UK, there has been a recent launch of a new Satellite based multichannel television delivery system, Freesat from the BBC and ITV. The official marketing blurb I saw give its selling point as allowing those homes who can't get freeview (the current multichannel delivery system) where they live.

What was interesting was that as a footnote they also noted that High Definition channels will also be available on the platform for free and there will be 200 channels. Which is great considering that Sky and Virgin Media both charge for the privilege of HD and a large number of channels.

For me this is the truly compelling benefit of Freesat and I immediately went out and bought a set top box and and am now the proud viewer of HD television for free. Apparently I am not alone since the HD boxes are already sold out in most stockists in the UK.

I am at a loss as to why the BBC and ITV are not more heavily pushing it as a HD platform which Freeview can only deliver by compromising the system. This means that Freesat will be the majority viewing platform in a few years. Under 3 years I think if they get the HD programming right.

I know politically due to the license fee they need to get Freeview to everyone and that's fine but the HD and 200 channels (Freeview has around 50) is the real killer application.

The subscription based TV model of Virgin and Sky may well be damaged by this move in the medium term.