We knew it was coming, and after waiting for quite some time for FreeSat to go from concept to reality, television viewers across the UK can finally indulge. If you'll recall, a recent survey found that just 5-percent of Europe's HDTV owners actually bothered to tune into HD programming, but now that number is likely to change. Effective today, 98-percent of the UK can fork out a one-time fee of £49 ($96) to £120 ($234) in order to acquire a FreeSat set-top-box, and after an £80 ($156) installation, users will have subscription-free access to BBC HD, ITV HD (coming soon), Channel 4's digital service and around 70 other TV / radio channels. Better still, that number is slated to rise to 200 before the year's end, and unsurprisingly, the launch is expected to boost available high-def offerings in the region. Anyone across the pond have their equipment set up already? How's the service?

[Thanks, Ivan]

Just a few hours before our live coverage of the XStreamHD press event (11am PST) with Michael Douglas; many of the details have been released and we have to say this thing looks so incredible, we don't see how it can live up to the press release -- this is one of those times when we'd really love to be wrong. For starters, the service promises to deliver "the latest content from leading studios" in 1080p (MPEG-2 and x.264) with 7.1 channels of lossless DTS-HD Master Audio (96kHz/24bits) to your home via satellite, and if it stopped there it would be impressive enough, but no. The content is stored on the internally in your "Virtual Personal Library" until you access it with up to four simultaneous DLNA devices on your gigabit Ethernet home network. If you run out of space, you can use the extra drive bays to expand up to 2TB of storage. And because there is so much great OTA HD content, it features three ATSC tuners which can be used with a "Network Video Recorder" -- not sure what that is, or if its extra. And interestingly even includes a PBX that allows free calling between XStreamHD customers. As if this wasn't unbelievable enough, it all starts at $399 and is expected to hit in the fourth quarter of '08.

Full release after the jump.

Since everyone else is pumpin' out USB TV tuners like they're going out of style, Sima Products -- those folks who brought us the Hitch transfer device -- is back again, and this time it's bringing the USB ATSC tuning love with the DTU-100. Aside from sporting that oh-so-portable USB stick design, this rendition touts a dedicated antenna port as well as a video input dongle to record your latest camcorder captures without a separate piece of hardware. The dongle supports stereo audio and composite / S-Video, but it's still not clear whether this all comes together as a nice, neat package, nor how much these niceties will set you back.