Just past history. It used to drive the BBC wild with rage when people like me would ask them politely if they could have a road map for going to S2 and a few other things. Ever since they changed the encoders for BBC HD they have had this idea that everyone is out to get them. They tend to be very tight lipped or not comment on changes these days as they think it'll generate complaints by merely making people more aware of something than they would have been. It would also be seen as a major climb down, as they only said a while back they'd like to go to S2, before that, nothing. I don't think it's a great policy as we saw when they monkeyed around with muxB on freeview and got rid of an interactive slot.
The BBC would argue (perhaps slightly unconvincingly) that they only have commitments to freesat users (which are ALL able to use DVB-S2) in terms of HD. They are aware of the other FTA boxes that likely aren't S2 in quite a few cases and plenty of video cards in PCs that are not S2. The freesat boxes were supposed to be fine if left in standby.
I'm happy it's S2, but they left it so late, that it may barely matter any more what with new capacity on the horizon.
