Commercial DTT transition hit by economic downturn Despite the Competition Authority rubber-stamping plans for a €165m investment in Irelands commercial DTT market, an article on 'independent.ie' reports that the start of services might be further away then they seem. It quotes “sources close the national broadcaster” as saying that despite Boxer winning the contract in September, to launch programmes on the service planned to start last month, they have yet to return the contract. RTE have already spent €40 million on equipment for the network and are now reluctant to spend more until the contract has been returned. All the rest to keep up is here http://www.dvb.org/about_dvb/dvb_worldwide/ireland/
My source in RTE tells me the rollout will still happen in OCTOBER 2009, on all main Transmission sites with smaller transmitters to follow in due course, I presume this means we will have a 2 tire DTT system, those in major population areas will have DTT and those in Rural or Small Towns will just have to wait and wait and wait
Well they had always planned to launch it as two teir system. RTE were supposed to launch the public service and Boxer the commercial service. RTE say they are on course to launch but now they'll probably hang on and not launch theirs alone until Boxer are ready.
There are engineer tests at most of the main transmitters and you can watch the 4 irish channels via dtt in mpeg4. The equipment is already bought and it makes no sense for RTE to switch off the whole thing. At least the public mux should officially launch in autumn.
silly question with what can u watch with mpeg4,as i know pc card i had was only mpeg2 which no longer works,freesat box?
I can tell you for 100% they are rolling it out, they have already started rolling it out in Cork and are pushing ahead big time. I work in Telecoms and have met with RTE a few times and they talk allot about it.
Of course they're 100% rolling it out. All the factual data is provided on the official dvb site in first post mate.
Your dvb-t pc card has nothing to do with mpeg decoding. You need a mpeg4 H264 codec at your pc, a viewer software which is willing to use that codec and a fast pc. Freesat is dvb-s via satellite and has nothing to do with dvb-t. Btw. irish DTT is currently available via Cairn Hill, Clermont Carn, Three Rock, Mt. Leinster, Spur Hill, Greystones, Dungarvan and Mullaganish. Maghera and Truskmore are expected to follow in the next weeks. They call the whole thing engineer tests but you can also call it prelaunch.
But as far as I'm aware Boxer haven't confirmed anything about their launch which means it's RTE stuff only so far as in RTE1, Network2, TV3, TG4?? And also I have no confirmation on what channels they will even be supplying.
It certainly looks like they will and if they don't return the contract very soon it will just go to someone else that originally bid for it. Paytv as an add on might not be bad at all, depending on price. But what will also be interesting is the FTA boxes they will use as it could be that they, in theory, will be patchable.
Mooley, what do you mean they are in theory patchable? Does that mean we don't need to throw out the SV2's yet?? They can be patched to use as set top box for DTT when it's rolled out?
Do you think a paytv provider would be so stupid and would start with a already hacked scrambling system? Beside that it looks like Boxer cannot afford a rollout and only the psb mux with the 4 irish channels will start FreeToAir in mpeg4.
No-one one knows for sure how it's going to go down. I would doubt Sv etc. would work. Actually no. For sure they won't work with DTT.
