There is some hope for non-Sky subscribers though - if ITV dump Sky on digital satellite and just pay the EPG fees then Ch4 and Ch5 will follow, then there might be a market for an FTA hard drive recorder.

ITV renewed it's contract for an extra two months recently to continue negotiations but it seems likely that they will go free-to-air but with channels tailored to a card holder's region. The viewer will need to buy a card for a one-off fee and register their address, if they don't they will get ITV London. They recently complained to Ofcom about the fees that Sky wanted to charge, I guess they wanted more than they charged the BBC for a similar service.

The main problem is that people still think dish=not free, we have several Sky receivers in the house which are used without subscriptions and 99% of people have no idea that it is possible. However because the systems are free when you subscribe this means that quite often when people get cable TV they put their old system in the paper for £20 and don't realise that they are still quite sought after.

Gareth