Relaying satellite channels in apartments

JDxtra

I was in a friend’s apartment over the weekend where a basic cable TV service is provided.

There is no monthly fee, yet the they are able to get all the Irish channels plus BBC1, BBC2, ITV & Channel 4 (plus a few others like CNN, POP etc). NTL were not interested in providing a service to the apartment block, and the residents are not allowed personal satellite dishes.

All the UK terrestrials are taken off satellite as you can see the "press the red button" during for Big Brother, Tennis, BBC news etc.

I have a few questions about this setup:

1) Is this legal? Should they not have to pay some sort off fee to the UK terrestrial channels?

2) Are the feeds for Channel 4 (for example) using a UK Solus FTV card? Or are there special cards for digiboxes if you are a cable company?

3) Should the digiboxes be tuned into the UK terrestrials via other channels? That way the interactive red buttons would not appear.

4) One of the channels being relayed is “Pop” – which finishes up at 6pm (I think). When this channel is not broadcasting you get a standard Sky digibox blue screen saying that programmes start at 6am. But when this blue screen is on – every minute or so, the numbers 6,2,7 appear on screen as if somebody is trying to change the channel (to the same channel number). How is this happening? Is this a feature so that if the digiboxes reset themselves – the channels will be reselected without an engineer having to visit?

The install itself was done by somebody from http://www.skyconway.com.

Genghis

Mmmm, that is interesting. I would be interested in the answers to your questions, for now allow me to speculate.

1. Question of legality. I know that it is not technically illegal for ordinary joe-soaps to possess and use a FTV card, but the situation changes when a commercial arrangement is established. Although there is no monthly fee, I am sure the contractor was paid, and so it might be illegal? It is surely also illegal to re-distribute these signals without permission, reagrdless of whether or not there is a charge. (incidently, they appear to be redistributing only FTV channels)

2. I believe there are special cards for cablecos, as there are for hotels etc, and I think I read on here that Chorus and NTL take UK terrestrial feeds from satellite. As to who issues these, and under what conditions I don't know, but the answer must be related to Question 1 in some way.

3. Definitely should be tuned via other channels, or to a dedicated channel (like Sky News Eire Cable - a dedicated version of the channel with no dot and Irish ads is made available to cablecos in Ireland). Again if they have a card like in Question 2, then they wouldn't have this problem.

4. Perhaps there is some sort of automatic remote that ensures the channels are selected all the time. But why can you see these keystrokes only on 'pop' and not on the other channels, and why not when that channel is live. for example, AFAIK if you type '501' while watching Sky News, you see 5 then 0 and then it disappears then you press 1. Also if they did have an automatic remote, you would imagine they would have it commanding back-up to avoid aforementioned red dots.

byte

Funny you should mention this as in Donegal Town, which is run by Chorus, E4 regularly gives a digibox onscreen message saying "No Satellite Signal is being received" and the box seems to automatically go to Services, Other Channels and chooses the E4 option (the only option) and if a "No Sat Sig" message appears again, the box repeats the process. So there must be some sort of automatic way of the box or IR transmitter to do this. The digiboxes used by cable cos maybe not be like standard household boxes, even though the software looks to be the exact same.

dmeehan

would they need a seperate box for each channel or are cable cos given "special" boxes

byte

I would assume they'd use a seperate box for each channel

Sin e an Fear

THIS is the correct URL.

Sounds like a similar set-up to Gibraltar and some places in Spain with large expat communities. However, whereas Sky turn a blind eye to pirating there, Ireland is a different story. UTV and C4 off satellite in RoI would be illegal, as both broadcasters have told me that the rights clearance only covers terrestrial overspill, and cable/MMDS operators can't take the signal off satellite.

Could see a rerun of the deflectors' battle.