RTE International - when?

rlogue

What's the current situation regarding RTE International? Is a September launch on the cards or will the whole idea be mothballed now that the election is over?

Elmo

I would hope that Minister Eamon Ryan would continue to put pressure on RTE over the next few months to set up such a channel. Available to both expats and here in Ireland.

At least in this area of government we have a new Minister from a different party.

But then I might be bias as I vote GREEN.

Also RTE seem to be going ahead with it, www.rte.ie/live

I would say we will have TG4 International long before RTE INTERNATIONAL e.g. www.tg4.tv

Or maybe they should come together to launch PSBI(Public Service Broadcasters of Ireland) or SPCÉ(seirbhís poiblí craolachán na hÉireann)

Not sure of the irish translation

icdg

A September launch will not happen. Or at least, not in 2007! At this stage we would have heard something.

RTÉ were reported to be rather unhappy when Noel Dempsey announced this (basically, an expensive extra service and no extra licence fee money to do it) and pretty much said publically that if they absolutely had to do, they would do a "go-slow" on it. Also, RTÉ were rumoured to be consulting the lawyers as to how much of their content the Act meant for them to have to provide abroad (bearing in mind that practically all imports cannot be shown abroad, and even a number of their own programmes have been sold to other broadcasters and/or they do not have rights to show them outside Ireland (indie productions for example, the producer might retain the export rights).

The relevant legislation incidently was passed back in April.

Elmo

RTÉ were reported to be rather unhappy when Noel Dempsey announced this (basically, an expensive extra service and no extra licence fee money to do it) and pretty much said publically that if they absolutely had to do, they would do a "go-slow" on it. Also, RTÉ were rumoured to be consulting the lawyers as to how much of their content the Act meant for them to have to provide abroad (bearing in mind that practically all imports cannot be shown abroad, and even a number of their own programmes have been sold to other broadcasters and/or they do not have rights to show them outside Ireland (indie productions for example, the producer might retain the export rights).

Sounds like a bit of a cop out to me.

I am sure that RTE retain most of their rights to Factual Programming. Prehaps not the idea itself but the hold on to the broadcast rights for the commissioned programme. I.E. the producers of The Restaurant own the right to the format while RTE retain the broacasting rights to the actual commissioned show and prehaps the rights to the idea for Ireland but only if the orginal producer is producing it (i.e. prevent TV3 or other commission the same series from the same producer).

RTE plenty of shows the produce themselves. RTE want a 12hour news service surely this is the ideal time to launch such a venture.

And I heard that the Licence fee can be used for such a venture and that the act extends the licence fee to RTE.ie for the first time.

Mix and match RTE ONE AND TWO to provide the service with some programming coming from TG4.

Also this summer was supposed to be the see the start of Morning TV on RTÉ ONE.

rlogue

I contacted my usually reliable source in RTÉ who told me they had no knowledge of any satellite channel but contact the Information office and see what they said.

Here's the response:

Dear Richard

Thank you for your query.

The Irish Government recently amended the Irish Broadcasting legislation to allow RTÉ to extend its television service abroad. The first stage is that RTÉ is continuing to extend its amount of live streaming of programmes on our website. RTÉ is also investigating managing our own satellite channel with home production from RTÉ One, RTÉ Two and TG4 in the UK and Western Europe. This process involves consideration of issues of finance and legal rights for acquired programming and make take some time.

I hope this is helpful and I regret that there is no further information available at this time.

Kindest regards

RTÉ Information

So it would seem no hurry then??

r3nu4l

Well it would be very nice but I won't hold my breath. I do watch a few RTÉ shows online but the quality is sometimes not great and many shows only show extract clips rather than full shows. Oh well, just have to wait...

Elmo

Well it would be very nice but I won't hold my breath. I do watch a few RTÉ shows online but the quality is sometimes not great and many shows only show extract clips rather than full shows. Oh well, just have to wait...

The quality of service on www.rte.ie/live and www.tg4.tv is far better then that of the BBC's output on the web. I have tried watch some stuff on the BBC only to find that the picture and sound is of very low quality. RTE sometimes suffers from black screens with only sound being transmitted, other then that I have found RTE's output on the web as good as the rest. (The BBC really need to look at their video output on the web).

r3nu4l

Well I haven't used the BBC iPlayer yet but I have watched episodes of Top Gear and the apprentice online in the last year and found the video and sound to be superb! Interesting to hear a different experience.

I do find that RTÉ playback sometimes jumps around and pixellates quite heavily at times. Other times it can be very blurry almost as if the camera is out of focus (which it obviously isn't!). Other times it's perfect!

Elmo

Well I haven't used the BBC iPlayer yet but I have watched episodes of Top Gear and the apprentice online in the last year and found the video and sound to be superb! Interesting to hear a different experience.

I might try their iPlayer the next time, I had just click on a link from their Panorama site.

rlogue

I'll have a crack at trying out the iPlayer shortly, ironically the development team are about 20 feet from my desk...

As to RTÉ International, I fear the dead hand of RTÉ bureaucracy will stifle it before long. How long does it take to hire space on a satellite? Surely the old infrastructure for Tara Television is still in place at Montrose? The old transmission suite was pretty well-equipped when I visited them. If RTÉ were really stuck as to how to run the channel and what to program on it I'm sure some of the old Tara staff would know what to do...

Elmo

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/default.stm

Link to panorama above

Clicked on Watch Now

Selected High Quality Real Player

Blank screen bad sound.

Anyone else having this problem?

And RTE's player doesn't work unless you take it out of the RTE player and this has bad quality picture

http://www.rte.ie/tv/newseason/av_20070808.html?2277546,null,228

New season, 6 new shows, same old same old (OTT)

www.tg4.tv sound isn't the greatest.

I suppose they all have their problems.

Lennoxschips

The Irish Government recently amended the Irish Broadcasting legislation to allow RTÉ to extend its television service abroad. The first stage is that RTÉ is continuing to extend its amount of live streaming of programmes on our website.

Ya, and if I try to view any of those things it usually says "This service is confined to the Republic of Ireland". Any way I can fool RTE into thinking my computer is in Ballincollig?

www.tg4.tv is available to me, and the quality is excellent, even though I have zero understanding of the language. Pity they have no streams of Irish lessons for beginners. I think they've missed the boat there.

I think RTE are doing as little as possible and trying to use this as an excuse to get more license fee money for themselves. I mean, they have their own uplink to Astra, all they have to do is buy just ONE channel on Astra and relay the news, fair city, classic soccer and gaa matches, ros na run, nationwide and other such crap and people would be happy. It would cost them next to nothing and they could rake in money with ads for Aer Lingus, Failte Ireland and Guinness. They're just too resistant to change. Look how long it took them to get around to broadcasting Radio 1 on longwave, they were decades late...

Either that or we'll see more movement on the issue when their Sky contract runs out... in spring 2008 I believe?