It's more than 18 months since I bought my FTA (free-to-air) satellite kit in Lidl but for a variety of reasons I'd actually watched very little on it until recently. That was mainly because I was learning Spanish at the time and decided to 'tune in' to Astra 1 and Hotbird to watch Spanish language soaps and news programs.
Not having a motorised dish or multiple LNBs it's not exactly an easy task to change satellite so it was only a few weeks ago that I finally decided to go to the bother of moving to Astra 2 and finding the BBCs, ITV, Sky News, Film4 and so on. We've never had cable or Chorus in my area so its actually a big deal for me to get some of these channels.
The problem is I'm finally learning how much a high quality signal adds to viewing pleasure and realizing how crap our terrestrial reception has always been. It didn't really bother me before but now I find the slightest bit of snowy ghosting distracting and annoying. So I've got to second Brian Greene's demand that RTE go FTA -
"So Noel Dempsey RTE & its audience council, and James Murdoch (BskyB) listen up, RTE is a licence funded Irish radio & TV service and it should be free to see & hear in Ireland what ever the platform….. RTE should follow BBC ITV Film 4 and make its output freely available to all."
By the way, Boards.ie have an excellent Satellite forum, without which I'd never have managed to install my own system.
I think FTA RTE is a smart idea too. I wonder what kind of buttons Brian Greene has pressed to test the reception of the idea in the halls of government.
Posted by: Bernie Goldbach | August 21, 2006 at 12:16 PM
Astra 2 will also give you the new English language al jazeera channel, which might give you a brand new twist on world news
Posted by: Damien | August 22, 2006 at 11:52 PM
Excellent, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks Damien.
Posted by: James Corbett | August 23, 2006 at 09:56 AM
On Astra 2 I retuned the Lidl modem/tuner so that I could have all the satellite signals including RTE. I then made a formal approach to RTE, willing to pay a card fee to open the blocked channels. The reply was, of course, that they are committed to Sky and could not entertain any other proposals. This immediately places a block on Rte becoming FTA.
Posted by: Joe | August 24, 2006 at 09:59 AM
WE NEED TO MAKE THIS AN ELECTION ISSUE.
We had a 'match of the day' TD before who held balance of power! RTE in the early 1990's wrote about the need not to have one dominant key holder to the crypto, alas they caved in to the mini dish, since then the public service must carry channels IN THE UK have made moves to go FTA and most of them are either FTA or were invested in by $ky. So now we have the really odd situ that BBC is FTA in the UK with 8+ TV and interactive streams (not to mention radio) all free on a Britain & Ireland footprint and RTE is encrypted. Also every ITV region except ireland's TV3 is fta digital satellite.
And then RTE have the wonderful idea to introduce DAB 10 years too late on technology 16 years old and mpeg2 DTT on its way without an owner in sight except Dempsey and his BT tests, when HD mpeg4 is current 2 standard.
Ireland has an opportunity to capitalise on learning from the UK's mistakes as we lag behind about 6 -10 years in tech terms, but all I see is multinational free marketeers repeating the UK mistakes in Ireland with old technology.
dont press red - SEE RED - change the system from within, I have €153 riding on it every year...
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
http://www.hamiltonpruim.co.uk/blog/firstwetakemanhattan.mp3
Posted by: Brian Greene | September 09, 2006 at 01:28 AM