Captain Jack said:
I wonder why they don't print what's beyond the 55 dbW mark...
Those official footprints are always make-believe, either way. Just because SES promise a narrow spot beam over the UK in their promotional brochure, will not inevitably make it so in practice. The new-generation satellites may be capable of more defined beams with steeper signal drop-off on the edges; but even state of the art satellite technology can't prevent some amount of fringe reception outside the UK.
Simply put, the entertainment industry are interested in a narrow spot beam with negligible spill-over, so that's what SES have drawn a picture of in their brochure.
Ultimately, it's going to be much the same as with the run-up to 1N; we won't know until we know. It is not unlikely that the parts of Scandinavia which now still get most of Freesat will be completely out of luck. They appear to be simply too far out of the way in the future. And much the same might happen to southern France and Spain. The really interesting question is going to be what is going to happen in countries which are a bit closer to Blighty and now have decent reception with relatively small dishes. e.g. the Netherlands, Belgium, and northwestern Germany.