maybe we are indeed going to be lucky and it's really all just about "additional" capacity. For example, aside from the HD channels, there has been talk about ITV wanting to put some more regional ITV1 channels on the Freesat platform which are currently not on it due to a lack of transponder capacity. That would of course be a good scenario... on the other hand, Astra 2D has a scheduled life expectancy of 12 years and was launched in 2000... it is now nearing its end. Hardware wise it would quite likely last another decade and longer up there in its orbit, but the thing is that satellites have fuel packs to counter what is called "planetary wobble" and to keep themselves at a constant distance from the earth's surface. Basically, the earth does not spin evenly on its axis, but it "wobbles" as it rotates, which affects satellite positions relative to the earth's surface. And the fuel packs are there to give off little jet bursts to countersteer, otherwise you would have to realign your dish all the time... and it also needs to give itself a burst regularly to stay in its assigned orbit because the Earth's gravity pulls on it... and 2D will soon have used up its fuel and thus become useless for continuous undisturbed broadcasting.
but again, no matter how you dissect it, given SES's sparse information flow, we simply won't know until we know...
