One if the new features of Windows Media Center in Windows 7 is native support of DVB-S (digital satellite), with a DVB-S enabled tuner card and a satellite dish you can pickup hundreds of free channels using FreeSat (in the UK). In fact a nice feature is that you can have a hybrid tuner card that can pickup DVB-T services like Freeview and DVB-S channels at the same time.
As I don’t have a dish setup at home I haven’t been able to test it so Ashleigh (the ape on Twitter) sent me a video of FreeSat in action on his Media Center system. In the video you can see all the channels available, BBC HD and the multi-tuner setup. One thing I forgot to mention in the voiceover is that the little padlock symbols on the TV channels in the guide indicates an encrypted channel
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