I’m afraid to say we are approaching the end of the road for terrestrial and satellite TV. Since the analogue was switched off around a decade or so ago, full coverage Freeview (6 mux) masts have declined, leaving those on the whole with an aerial without expensive equipment hooked up to half coverage Freeview (3 mux) repeater masts. In 2022 mux E (com7) closed, as the licence expires and won’t be renewed, further reducing the amount of frequency capacity available for both HD & SD services on Freeview. Similarly, temporary Com8 was closed in 2020, initially seeing channels move to Com7 until its closure in 2022, and Com8 was handed over to the 5G network.
This will see terrestrial Freeview life expectancy end in 2034, and in a similar way, as licences aren’t renewed by broadcasters, satellite-based Freesat is expected to end by the end of the decade, as broadcasters push towards streaming, which means if you were to join Sky today, you would have little option other than to take their streaming box.
In its basic form the Freely set-top box is one such streaming device. On-demand app-based players, in the majority, aren’t always capable of allowing you to pause and rewind without a dedicated box that can do it for you. Equally and perhaps more important, unlike recorded content, streaming will likely force viewers to sit through ever-lengthening ad breaks even when watching, as it stands today and maybe in the future!
This, imo, will be the next BT Openreach scandal, which saw them digitise phone lines!