With the sixth series of Big Brother expected to start in just a month time, it's been announced that Freeview will be streaming the action from the house throughout the series.

E4 is currently a paid Top Up TV channel on the Freeview service, but is said to be switching to a free-to-air channel at the end of May - just in time for the new series.

E4+1 will also be launching on Freeview to give an hour-delayed view of action from the house, as was available with last years series on Sky Digital.

Of course the one major problem with Freeview is that the signal quality is patchy to say the best, and despite getting some channels you might not get others, so it could be a risky move buying a Freeview box in the hope to get the live streaming, just to find you can't pick up the E4 channel, and it's not clear if the current Top Up TV channel frequency will be kept when it goes free next month, so even if you can get it now you might find you can't when the series starts...

...I used to be able to get the E4 "top up tv" screen telling me it was available if I paid for it, but now don't even seem to be able to get that channel since knocking the aerial a few weeks back causing half the channels to vanish...

You can find out more about Freeview and availability of it in your area at www.freeview.co.uk and there's a selection of Freeview boxes available in the Cuss shop.

The Eye will keep an eye on all the news of Big Brother 2005, and get back to you.

It hardly seems any time since BB5, and amazingly enough in just six weeks time the latest series of Big Brother may well have started on our screens again.

Of course with the Celebrity Big Brother earlier this year it's fused the normal "public" version with the "celeb" show, which might be what makes last years fight-fest seem as though it wasn't all that long ago... but then it was exactly six months between Nadia walking out the winner and the celebrity version starting, which just proves how quickly time flies.

Channel 4 tight lipped
As is always the case with Big Brother, there's very little known about the new series yet. And quite rightly so.

May 27th is the current favourite date for fans who are speculating on the start of the series, and it's thought it might be the longest yet running for a massive 15 weeks.

It also seems that Channel 4 might not want a repeat of last years tensions (despite the fact they were great viewing and caused the number of people tuning in to absoloutely rocket) and are looking for a more relaxed "housemates having fun" atmosphere to this years show, much in the theme of the original Big Brother series.

Changes to the house also seem likely although quite what will change really won't be known until the housemates set foot inside the Hertfordshire based property for the first time - and for that matter with secret rooms now becoming a key feature of the series it seems likely that we'll not know exactly what changes have been made until the very last day as they're well known for keeping some suprises to the very end.

Twenty best housemates
Channel 4 are asking viewers to vote for their twenty all-time fave housemates from the previous Big Brother years, and the votes are going to result in a show on E4. Make your views heard by taking part in the nominations on the official Big Brother website.