Why did is DTT taking so long?

Chillwithcian

Hi,

I have been very interested in the whole area of DTT/Regional broadcasting for a long while and have been following its progress. However I dont understand WHY it has taken so long! Why is it that in the UK, several diffrent regional ITV varients like Granada and Border, LWT etc... could be set up BEFORE RTE began broadcasting? and back then AND still up to now we dont have any regional variations in Ireland of RTE/TG4/TV3 (exept for RTE cork but its not exactly proper!)

The UK started talking about switching off the anolouge and launching FreeView back in 2000, the have since launched freeview, but by the time it came about we were only starting trials initiated by RTE, which failed and only now are we actulay trying to do something about it (but the current goverment dont seem that bothered as far as I can see).

Im curious as to why we are so far behind, (it seems wih everything in communications in this country, from broadband to mobile phone markets), when poorer countries then us like Romania and Bulgaria can afford a DTT systym.

WHY ARE WE SOO SLOW??!!

Most people seem contented with the 'Rabbit Ears', but i think its time we came out of the dark ages, id like to have a CHOICE when im paying my TVlicence @ 18 in a year and a half's time rather then bieng forced to pay Sky/NTL for multichannel!

watty

The 1999 trials where successfull. On the current "trial" DVB-RCT has been dropped though MPEG4 added.

DVB-RCT was brilliant even more so now. The current "trials" in comparison are not to develop or prove any technology. It's all standard off the shelf.

Money is the reason for delay, and political vision/will to do something. For 10 years we have had a Governement with no vision or big picture plans/joined up thinking and a totally wishy washy ineffectual opposition. Hopefully now we will have some fresh ideas in Government and a decent invigorated opposition with all its fresh TDs.

Though I won't hold my breath on either.

Sponge Bob

That moron dempsey was in charge in comms for a long time at a key juncture for policy and momentum and that explains about 50% of the delay .

The other 50% is a myriad of failures including (in no order or weighting)

1. deflector lobbies
2. rte refuse to deploy dtt and have done since the late 1990s
3. sky has 25% of households already
4. comreg are crap
5. the bci are crap
6. when mary harney was banging on about ireland being the ehub of europe in the early part of this decade she was talking out of her ass
7. the price of toast
8 other factors .

Chillwithcian

The latest news (or should I say waffle?) is rehasing much of the same crap we have heard before (Taken from Department of Communications website)


'''Dublin, 5th March 2007

Noel Dempsey T.D., the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources today announced the launch of the second phase of the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) Pilot. The European Commission has proposed 2012 as the date by which switch-off of analogue TV could be completed across Europe.
This second phase of the pilot will involve a trial with an initial panel of 500 public participants, who have been drawn from the Dublin and Louth areas. This will rise to 1,000 participants over the lifetime of the trial.
Commenting on the launch of the public participation phase, Minister Dempsey said; “This latest phase in the Digital Terrestrial Television pilot will provide a unique insight into the issues involved in the provision and attractiveness of DTT services to Irish viewers. Members of the public will have an opportunity to test the first Irish DTT trial service and to provide feedback to the Department on their experiences of the services on offer. This will help us to gear up for the 2012 switch off proposed by the European Commission.”
The objective of the trial is to identify the issues associated with a transition from an analogue terrestrial TV platform to a digital terrestrial TV platform. Digital TV is currently available on a number of platforms, such as cable, MMDS and satellite but this is the first time digital TV will be available from terrestrial transmitter systems in Ireland.
Each trial participant will be provided with receiver equipment which has been specially adapted for the trial. Content will be provided from a number of sources (for a full list please see notes to editors). Some additional radio and TV channels may come on stream at a later stage in this phase of the trial.
The pilot will continue until August 2008, during which time DTT broadcasts will transmit from the Three Rock site in Dublin and the Clermont Carn site in County Louth.
“I am committed to ensuring that Ireland keeps ahead of developments in digital broadcasting across the EU. A DTT service is capable of providing much more for Irish viewers in the long-term in terms of quality, service and additional channels than an analogue service,” continued the Minister.
This phase of the Pilot works in tandem with legislation currently being brought through the Oireachtas. The Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2006 sets out a framework for the future licensing of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in Ireland with a view to facilitating national DTT roll-out. It also provides for consideration of analogue switch-off.
“The pilot will play an important part in informing the development of Ireland’s long-term broadcasting strategy. It will also encourage stakeholder and public interest in DTT,” concluded Minister Dempsey.'''

Sponge Bob

Arse , dempsey only has €4m TOTAL for dtt rollout in the NDP 2007-2013. This was settled last year . that statement is complete arse .

€2m this year and €2m next year. Then there is no more money and it will be turned off !

Follow the money as the man said.

SPDUB

Sponge Bob wrote:

2. rte refuse to deploy dtt and have done since the late 1990s
.

RTE weren't allowed to deploy it on the basis that " State is bad private is good" which is fine if the private sector had been willing to deploy it

watty

RTE a) didn't have money, b) wern't alowed

The only bid for the privat licence collapsed in 2001 as they where ejits and ITV Digital woes etc and small number of channels mad it unattractive.

If it was all MPEG4, then 60 channels, rather than 30 and more commercial for pay TV. But now Sky is got big share, BBC/ITV FTA satellite and now UPC fixing the MMDS and Cable.

Giving SCTV a hypercable/MMDS/11.7G licence has set a bad pecedence for deflector operators and hurt the better DTT system.

watty

£4m is almost nothing. A full network is £80M to £200M maybe.

The current pilot is a political smokescreen to convince EU we have a plan and are doing something.

It is of almost no value. If someone was prepared to make decisons and spend the money we could start rolling out 6 years ago or earlier never mind tomorrow. There is nothing to "wait for" in terms of end of trail.

I've no doubt they picked the set box as it was used recently in London for BBC HD DTT trail. There is not spectrum for HD till analogue is turned off. Obviously since TNT uses MPEG4 and it gives twice as many standard channels in same space they would be idiots not to have that in the so called "pilot" also.

The way the box are handed out and the "instructions" with them shows how phoney the "Pilot" is.

Chillwithcian

I feel like doing a petition/writing a letter but will it make any diffrence? :rolleyes:

He will probably be frolicing among the flowers for years to come!


In actual fact you are all making me feel the 'power to the people' feeling so I think I will contact him!! :mad:

http://www.noeldempsey.ie/get_in_touch/

L1011

except... he's not the minister for communications anymore! Eamon Ryan is.

Also, why will you be paying a TV licence when you're 18? This is Ireland not Germany, unless you move out the day of you'll still be covered by whatever licence is in your house (Parents I guess)

Chillwithcian

MYOB wrote:

except... he's not the minister for communications anymore! Eamon Ryan is.

Also, why will you be paying a TV licence when you're 18? This is Ireland not Germany, unless you move out the day of you'll still be covered by whatever licence is in your house (Parents I guess)

Woops...Eamon Ryan it is then!:o

I thought you had to pay a TV licence regardless of whosever home/person you live in once you get to 18!:eek:

L1011

No, one licence per residence - the licence-at-18 is Germany and nowhere else I know of.

One thing to convince Ryan with is that DTT uses less power to transmit than ATT - significantly so, in fact... he is a Green after all

Ulsterman 1690

I remember hearing somewhere the Irish Green party were pro-broadband and digital TV (not sure if this was related to saving power or some other reason)

Round Cable

Interestingly from the Green Party Manifesto 2007

http://www.greenparty.ie/en/content/download/13260/155495/file/Manifesto_full.pdf [PDF]

On the the area of communications they propose to:

'develop an all-island digital ‘free to air’ broadcasting service carrying RTE 1 & 2, TG4, TV3 and the Northern Ireland BBC/ITV public service main channels.'

This could be DTT or a FTV Satellite scheme, it doesn't really specify, at least the Greens have absolutely no excuse for not implementing some kind of Free Digital TV service.

Sponge Bob

I think we could maybe cobble together a manifeshto now that dempsey is gone

1. am i right in saying there is agreement on a FTA or FTV Sat service either would do ???
2. am I right in saying that for about 30% of the state the sat service would be a better idea than dtt ...eg deflector land ...at least for now and for sd services witha revisit circa 2015
3. am I wrong if I say that the cards shoul be enabled or disabled according to live tv licences ...free to licenceholders north and south ???
4. am I right in saying that the other 70% should get dtt and hd capability
5. am I right in saying that 3 should pay for all of it ...as they benefit disproportionately given their refusal to serve 30% of the state as it is .

....just to see what people think around here .

Because if there were some agreement around here we would probably find that Minister Ryan would listen and may even do something ...unlike his arrogant and ignorant predecessor....and sure watty could sticky the thread if we were all group hugging and not killing each other .

byte

Some sort of FTV service might be a good idea for those outside the scope of DTT reception. But, that shouldn't mean RTENL or whoever takes a laxidaisical approach to DTT, because of ah sure, they can get it on satellite if they want, no rush

They could still use Astra 2D, but perhaps use another encryption service, as well as Videoguard for those with Sky.

As for cards being active/deactivated depending on the status of license, it mgiht be a good idea, but how many cards could/should be allowed per household?

Sponge Bob

1 per household in the 30% of the state that TV3 really needs to cover ...for now , if you have a sky sub you do not need one . You are talking about 15%-20% of households or so.

watty

No link to licence. That way lies Government Control and the police state and loss of broadcaster independance. otherwise it does seem a nice idea.

Satellite is far more sensible for rural areas and some towns than terrestrial. Cheaper to run (1/10th of running cost)

Up to 10 cards or 2 per person, which ever is higher.

Sponge Bob

watty wrote:

No link to licence. That way lies Government Control and the police state and loss of broadcaster independance. otherwise it does seem a nice idea.

I think thats overblown watty. The "link to licence" would be a tick box on the application form where you opt in...or not....and an area check then flags the card as available or not.

Database issues free card to licencee which can be enabled or disabled over the air as they renew the licence ...or not. The tv licence database has been around for years and a licence is mandatory north and south .

In the south only available to the 15-20% of licencees on relays or substandard reception areas ...where tv3 wont go .

This enables us to

1. upgrade all main transmitters to dtt , pronto and not worrry about relays for now.
2. comply with analogue switchoff , we have no hope as things stand . NONE!
3. free up spectrum for digital dividend post 2012 including hd over the freed analogue spectrum
4. then we can look at dtt phase 2, the relays and the deflectors which should never exist in a modern state , during the timeframe 2012-2015 and reduce the number of persons who qualify for the ftv cards.

As for fta and not ftv.....we should be looking at aggregating the best of Irish into a TV5 type channel as per France and putting that out on astra2 and hotbird. We do not have the worst telly in the world overall ...even more so given the small population .....and should show everyone that .

Consider BBCNI/RTE/TG4 and to a much lesser extent utv tv3 and channel 6 as the content providers .

slicedpanman

The linking of a licence to a viewing card does sound like a good idea but I think we're all looking at it the wrong way round; i.e. not letting people have a card unless they have a valid licence...

What if we let everyone apply for as many cards as they like whether they have a licence or not? The cards have to be delivered to some sort of postal address and the Govt could log all destination addresses on a list of households that "should" have a licence... They will be more likely to have in inspector call round

Sponge Bob

Thats a bit too police state ish slicedpanman ???!!!!

My way is to add a reception flag to the database. if you are in a crap reception area and request the card its free.

If you have no licence , no card. If you have a paid licence but no reception you are entitled to digital TV and get it from a sat.

If you are late paying next year (and its backdated like road tax) you get 3 months grace before the disable code is broadcast .

If you renew and already have a card another activation code is sent for that year.

Its cheaper and more effective that building the broadcasting system we never had ....in the short term.

Only 250k households (at the max I'd say) would qualify anyway. The rest can have DTT with no restriction on reception of the FTA muxes .

In the next NDP we may build a full national broadcasting system for the first time ever ...or not....... but as it is the north cannot have their digital dividend because of our dicking around with no analogue cutoff date.

Its time we showed some courtesy to our neighbours who have planned something intelligent in the long term.

Chillwithcian

Sponge Bob wrote:

Its time we showed some courtesy to our neighbours who have planned something intelligent in the long term.

Exactly!:mad: