Sky Three available on cancelled Irish sub cards

TVDX

A mate of mine had his Irish Sky digital subscription shut off recently and I noticed that even though all the encypted channels he once had are now cut off, Sky Three is still available.
I saw it with my own eyes!.

When I got home I tuned my FTV card receiver into Sky three and pulled out the card and it went. So it is certainly not FTA.
It's good to know a cancelled Irish sub card is now still worth holding onto.

In other words thte system in place to allow RTE to be veiwed on a cancelled card(in effect FTV in UK) is there and wouldn;t it be a nice gesture if RTE would use it and provide at least their channels in digital to people who can't afford to pay Sky.

shortys94

so sky three should be available to me if i am not paying a subscription?

Hagar

TVDX wrote:

nice gesture if RTE would use it

I'm going to frame this. I never saw "nice gesture" and "RTE" in the same sentence before.

Sparky

maybe the system they used on the card, set it as a irish type ftv card, rather than a full kill the card setting.

Round Cable

I have a funny feeling this is why Sky never made ITV and Channel 4 available here, if the Irish Sky Card could act as a FTV card, then Sky could find themself losing a good number of subscribers, to FreeSat. BBC,1,2,3,4 ITV1,2,3,4 Channel4 and an analogue terrestrial aerial for the Irish stations, I think this will do for me when the years up, minus Channel4, of course.

Sparky

well yeah all we miss now is ch4 and five, mind you ive a uk ftv card and i herdly watch five

DMC

Round Cable wrote:

I have a funny feeling this is why Sky never made ITV and Channel 4 available here, if the Irish Sky Card could act as a FTV card, then Sky could find themself losing a good number of subscribers, to FreeSat. BBC,1,2,3,4 ITV1,2,3,4 Channel4 and an analogue terrestrial aerial for the Irish stations, I think this will do for me when the years up, minus Channel4, of course.

Excellent point.

Mossy Monk

Round Cable wrote:

I have a funny feeling this is why Sky never made ITV and Channel 4 available here, if the Irish Sky Card could act as a FTV card

not doubting you but going by that theory BBC 1 and 2 NI would have been available on a cancelled sub card when they were encrypted. did anyone notice this?

Capt'n Midnight

Just tried it and can see SKY 3 using an FTV card

Mossy Monk

thats right, Sky put it on FTV cards. makes sense really. if only they put the other channels available on Freeview FTV. that would be great

watty

No, Sky has obviously done this. It would not at all suited Sky to have had ITV/BBC FTV in Ireland, nor before FTA for BBC / ITV to have those as Irish FTV. BBC never was, till BBC went FTA you lost it when cancelling.

It isn't up to RTE going FTV. It is up to Sky to decide which package RTE/TV3/TG4 is in or even if it is Irish FTV. Sky may be useing FTV and the "advertising" of the Digibox as a preferred way to make FTA boxes less attractive. If it make marketing sense for Sky to have any Irish channel as Irish FTV they can I think do this without reference to BCI, Comreg or RTE/TG4/TV3.

Round Cable

I'm not too sure, but I think I read that ex UK subs cards didn't act as a FTV card until recently, before that they'd have to go and buy a FTV card after cancelling.