Switching channels: TV’s going digital

On Oct 24, Ireland’s TV signals will go digital. This means non-cable and satellite TV viewers will need to make choices about where their service comes from, says John Hearne

IRELAND’S terrestrial, analogue TV service will be switched off on Oct 24 to be replaced by digital. If your TV channels are via an aerial and you’ve ignored the annoying ads about Saorview, don’t worry. They won’t annoy you after Oct 24, because your TV won’t work.

Upgrading to Saorview is easy, but most of us won’t have to. If you’re a UPC or Sky TV subscriber, your TV channels are via cable, satellite or MMDS, so Oct 24 is irrelevant.

If you use an aerial and don’t pay for subscriber services, you will have to buy either a Saorview set-top box or upgrade to an integrated digital television. If you’re happy with your TV, then the set-top box is the best option.

You may also need a new aerial. If you have difficulty picking up TV3, your aerial may be an old-style VHF model and it won’t pick up the digital signal. A TV retailer will be able to sell you one.

Not everyone will be able to get Saorview. It’s available to 98% of the population, but there are pockets of the country no signal can reach. Check online at Saorview.ie, or call 1890 222 012, before you buy a digital box that won’t work in your location.

In choosing a box, shop around. Some models will not allow you to record on one channel while watching another. Hooking it up is straightforward; you shouldn’t need a visit from an installer. There are online guides, but your retailer should be able to demonstrate in-store. The channels are scanned and tuned similarly to the channels on a car radio.

Saorview is not the only game in town. There are many ways of watching your favourite shows. Here is a selection:

UPC

The company’s best value bundles together home phone and broadband, but these are not available everywhere. Focusing on TV, UPC offers three packages. Digital Value+ is €26.50 a month, providing 50 channels, along with pause, rewind and record live.

Their new ‘on demand’ package includes this, allowing you to watch the RTÉ Player and 3Player (of which more later) directly on your TV. You can also rent movies via ‘on demand’, though there is an additional cost, from €1.99 for ‘library movies’ up to €5.99 for high-definition new releases.

For €33 a month, you get Digital Select Extra +, which has 90 channels, and expands ‘on demand’ to include TV box-sets and children’s programming.

UPC’s premium offering, Digital Max+, is 110 channels plus ‘on demand’ for €36 a month. UPC’s packages allow you to set your system to record TV remotely via the internet.

There’s a separate charging structure for the premium channels — movies and Sky Sports, while €5 a month gets you an additional box. Installation costs are €45.

Sky TV

The entry-level package is Sky Entertainment, for €25 per month. This has 38 entertainment channels (along with hundreds of free-to-air channels), including Sky Atlantic and Sky living. You can also record, pause and rewind live TV, and you have two additional services — Sky Anytime and Sky Go. Sky Anytime is a 40-hour package of the best of the week’s TV, as selected by Sky. Sky Go is the mobile package, allowing you to watch TV on a range of mobile devices, like tablets and phones.

Sky Entertainment Extra costs €33 and includes the entry-level package. It offers 90 channels, including Discovery, MTV Rocks and Disney XD. There’s also a movie-lover package, including the suite of movie channels for an additional €28. The Sports Fan package, which includes the six sports channels, costs an additional €34 a month. All of these packages can be upgraded to high definition for an extra €15 per month. The Sky+ box and standard set-up are free.

Video on-demand

If you can do without live TV, there are great options. Netflix (netflix.com) began as a mail-order DvD library in the late 1990s, but has reinvented itself in the last two years and is now the market-leading, on-demand movie-streaming service. They charge €6.99 a month for unlimited film and TV downloads.

You can watch online using your computer; you can hook your laptop up to your TV and watch on that; or you can connect your games console to your TV, or watch on the hoof using your smartphone or tablet. There’s a one-month free trial, and there’s no minimum contract; you can opt out at any time.

This is streaming, not downloading, so you don’t have to go bake a cake or cut the grass while you’re waiting for the film to travel down the wire. Nor do you have to make space on your hard-drive for the content, but, on the downside, you can’t view offline.

iTunes (apple.com/itunes) films allows you to purchase or rent movies in two flavours, regular or high definition. With iTunes, however, you’re downloading, not streaming, which means you’ll need to find space. The average HD movie takes up about 3-4GB. On the upside, you can begin watching while the movie is downloading.

Blinkbox (blinkbox.com) is owned by Tesco, and is another on-demand streaming service, though is more closely related to the bricks-and-mortar video store. There’s no monthly subscription.

You open an account, select your movie, and pay for what you see. There’s a decent selection, plenty of free content, as well as titles not yet available on other subscription services. Most rentals cost GBP£3.49 (about €4.40) and will be available to view for 30 days.

To make any of these services work, you need reasonable broadband. Netflix sets a minimum threshold of 500kbps (0.5MB). You can toggle between three video-quality settings to help manage data usage.

TV Players

The various stations have invested heavily in their online players in the last two years, and the early versions, with their endless buffering and dodgy picture quality, have largely disappeared.

With RTÉ Player (rte.ie/player), anyone with a broadband connection can stream selected programming direct to their PC or laptop for a period of three weeks after the programme has aired on terrestrial TV, plus it’s now possible to view live TV online.

Behind-the-scenes refinements have improved the quality of the stream, and expanded the range of platforms on which content can be viewed.

TV3’s 3 Player offers a similar suite of catch-up programming, though its live offering isn’t as well developed, featuring marquee shows only, including Tonight with Vincent Browne and The Morning Show. The player has a couple of nifty features, including twitter integration, so you can comment on whatever it is you’re watching as you’re watching it.

Channel 4’s 4od player is one of the best, and includes a large archive of high quality old stuff, together with a handy facility for personalising your history and setting parental controls.

One of the big irritants with these players is the advertising on the ‘pre-roll’, which can often extend to five ads before you hit the programme you want.

You tolerate ads on TV, but when you’re used to clicking away instantly from what you don’t like, it’s harder to accept them. But all of that investment has to be paid for.

One problem with the TV players is that if your broadband isn’t up to it, they will be useless

Aertv

If your broadband is up to it — we’re talking speeds of at least 1Mb — this is an excellent alternative to Saorview, or, indeed, any subscriber service. At Aertv.ie, you can stream live TV onto your laptop, PC or mobile device. Right now, you can get 15 channels free — all the Irish channels, plus France 24, Russia Today and Dáil Eireann.

The service comes from broadband provider, Magnet Networks. If you subscribe to their broadband services, you can upgrade to additional channel packs. Pricing varies from €3.99 to €7.99, depending on special offers and other bundled discounts. You just need an email address to register.

These services also feature social media link-ins; you can stay in touch with friends via Twitter, Facebook and Google+, while watching online TV.

Other Satellite Services

While Sky TV offers subscriber satellite services, it’s also possible to invest in satellite hardware and access a list of channels without any monthly subscription. There are a range of ‘combo boxes’ available from online and high-street electronic and satellite retailers, and these will give you access to both the Saorview and Freesat channels — Freesat being the UK’s free-to-air digital satellite TV service.

Some of these set-top boxes are Saorview-approved and some are not. The approved combination boxes will give you the list of channels, together with RTÉ’s new digital teletext service. They will also give you Freesat channels, albeit on a separate channel list, and you’ll have to toggle between them.

The non-approved boxes will give you the Saorview and Freesat channels on the same list, but you won’t get teletext.

If you go for the combo box, you’ll need both the satellite dish, to pick up the Freesat channels, and the correct aerial, to get the Saorview channels.

Fitting your own satellite dish isn’t rocket science. Most reasonable DIYers should be able to manage the job with a little advice from the retailer.

Tony Moore, of Satellite.ie, says that about half of his customers fit the hardware themselves and half need some assistance. “It depends on the skill set that people have, on their budget and what they’re comfortable doing. We put a video on the site to show people what’s involved, so they know what they’re getting into.”

You don’t have to climb up to the chimney to put the dish up, and, once installed, the hardware tends to be robust and won’t need any adjustment. Having said that, it’s possible that the set-top box may have to be fine-tuned every six months or so.

Moore says that his most popular set-top box is the Ferguson Arriva, which outsells all his other boxes by about eight to one. It provides all Saorview and Freesat Channels and retails at just under €100. This is not a Saorview-approved box, so it won’t have digital teletext (though these boxes are also available).

To access Freesat services with this box, you’ll need a 60cm satellite dish, which will bring the cost (set-top box, dish, fixings) up to €180. If you don’t fancy fitting it yourself, installation will be extra.

Accessing TV this way is 100% legal.

“I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now,” says Mr Moore, “so I think I’d be in jail if it wasn’t. It’s funny. A lot of people think it’s illegal, because there’s no monthly fee. And some people do it because they think it’s illegal and they get off on bending the rules.”