RTE Announce FTA Saorsat service

watty

rlogue wrote: »

Whoa, what a bunch of evil geniuses!!

All they can offer is what Sky can offer, except much less pay TV, just as locked up, but admittedly cheaper Encryption and EPG.

But which compelling payTv content can they get an exclusive on?

Who would move from Sky, 450K plus Ireland or UK Millions+++ to unproven platform with maybe 10K to 50K in first year?

What can they offer that Sky, Virgin & UPC couldn't undercut the next day with a cheaper better package?

Or is it just Fortec's plan to sell 10K to 80K boxes and then when it folds, they have made profit selling the HW?

STB

Well i just read that part political broadcast from The Future.

I will have to sign up to respond and correct ALL of the inaccuracies in his post.

Back to REAL! rlogue - do you have any interest in this ?

So its encryption and epg offerings from the Real people eh.... Emm FTA is Free to Air. Free to view is Free to View.

RTE are mandated to provide Free to Air. Hence Saorsat. Yes the boat has sailed. Fortec selling boxes, surely not!

Sounds to be like someone trying to charge or repackage a good 7 day epg FTA combo box for DTT and Sat..... and that boat may have sailed too.

rlogue

My only interest is that I dislike Murdoch with a passion and would not subscribe to Sky if I had an alternative for the specific TV I want to watch.

As everyone on this board probably knows I have campaigned long and hard for legal access to Irish TV in the UK. I took part in the e-consultation process on the Broadcasting Act that compelled RTE to provide an overseas service by satellite.

No financial interest or otherwise in Real Digital - however I do have a lot of goodwill towards the idea that they should offer an alternative to Sky. After all, an Irish Sky box can of course provide the basic Irish channels but as anyone with a Sky+ HD box will tell you Sky deliberately withhold many of the UK channels from an Irish box.

If Real were able to provide a HD PVR with all the Irish terrestrials and the UK Freesat channels that would be a good product I'd be willing to subscribe to (if I lived in Ireland of course ;-))

Adds: The Swiss or Dutch models that allow expats to watch their domestic channels abroad on payment of the official licence fee appeals to me - but you need a FTV system first.

watty

Real Digital would simply be a poor copy of Sky with less choice of equally locked down box.

What you need is a Proper RTE International.

Adds: The Swiss or Dutch models that allow expats to watch their domestic channels abroad on payment of the official licence fee appeals to me - but you need a FTV system first.

The Swiss and Dutch is different.
Swiss is not EU, so can discriminate by Nationality, but will send card to any address.
Dutch is EU, so can't limit to Dutch citzens. Anyone in Netherlands can subscribe. Technically a Dutch person in UK can only subscribe via pretending to be in Netherlands. Unlike UK FTV, it's not I think post code based but some sort of Social Services registration number. As with UK FTV card and Irish Sky Sub, it's easy of course to get a card outside Netherlands.

Rights holders are getting tougher, so FTV card schemes like France, UK & Netherlands are becoming problematic as they don't actually limit Geographic coverage at all. Actual Pay TV is not such an issue, especially if there is some harmonisation of price, as the rights holder getting paid more. The Swiss scheme requires a Swiss passport if you are abroad. Their scheme is only limited by reception and Nationality.

In EU you can only limit sales by geography, not by Nationality of EU citizen.

scruffy66

I read in last edition of WHAT SATELLITE, that Freesat where not ruling out having a subscription service [ ie sky sports] in order to secure freesats future.

Just wondering has anybody heard anything about this and does anybody think
that Freesat might bring out a box with a sports subscription card

watty

1) It wouldn't make any difference to Freesat's future. The profit would be tiny.
2) It's extremely unlikely. The Clue is in the name.
3)Freeview has no subscription. Subscription on Terrestrial is "top up TV", Separate organisation.
4) Pay TV on Freesat would bring Freesat into competition with Sky PayTV. I can't see that helping. The whole point of Freesat is that it's free

scruffy66

watty wrote: »

1) It wouldn't make any difference to Freesat's future. The profit would be tiny.
2) It's extremely unlikely. The Clue is in the name.
3)Freeview has no subscription. Subscription on Terrestrial is "top up TV", Separate organisation.
4) Pay TV on Freesat would bring Freesat into competition with Sky PayTV. I can't see that helping. The whole point of Freesat is that it's free

I would tend to agree with most of what you say watty but if the board of freesat are considering it and Emma scott freesats managing director says that
they are looking at pay tv [sky sports 1 and 2],then maybe its something that could happen in the future.

scruffy66

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/19/freesat-considers-pay-tv?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments


Heres the link to the article

watty

STB wrote: »

Well i just read that part political broadcast from The Future.

I will have to sign up to respond and correct ALL of the inaccuracies in his post.

No problem approving your sign up.

Today's missive

Saorsat and Saorview are dead before they begin?
Submitted by TheFuture on 19 September 2010 - 10:40am.

RTE has for reasons only they know used a DTT sepc that no other major European market uses. I think the answer to this could be 1 or 2 possible reasons?



1. The use of the system was cheaper than using a DVB-T DTT system such as the UK or
2. RTE saw an advantage by using a DTT system that was not in use in its nearest neighbours therefore allowing RTE to control the number of channels the Irish viewers could receive.

It certainly isn't the best system that could have been used. For low cost to the consumer RTE should have followed the UK MPEG2 DTT-T1 platform as STB's would be very cheap for Irish TV License payers to buy. €20 for a basic box.

from http://www.techtir.ie/blog/loguey/is-saorsat-innovation-or-blocking#comments

Hopefully the Irish consumer will simply ignore the Saorsat and Saorview equipment when it comes out its going to be too expesive anyway for many. Then RTE will be broadcasting to themselves, a expesnive white elephant. Eventually someone will bring to account the RTE people and a new low cost system will be offered.

watty

scruffy66 wrote: »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/19/freesat-considers-pay-tv?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments


Heres the link to the article

Maybe Freesat is going to Partner and have "Real Digital" provide pay TV content?

Apogee

ILS is proud to play an important role in fostering industry growth with new innovations such as KA-SAT for Eutelsat, the first satellite to operate exclusively in high-capacity Ka-band and SkyTerra-1 with its hybrid satellite and terrestrial 4G network services. Both of these satellites will launch this year on ILS Proton with SkyTerra-1 scheduled for November and KA-SAT in December.

http://www.ilslaunch.com/2010-world-satellite-business-week

Apogee

Eutelsat wrote:

Eutelsat was the pioneer satellite company in Europe for TV broadcasting, and is once again breaking new ground with the launch in December this year of Europe’s first High-Throughput Satellite for broadband, data and video services.

Due to enter service in spring 2011, KA-SAT will be the world’s most powerful multi-spotbeam Ka-band satellite, operating in combination with an advanced ground network of ten gateways linked by a high capacity fibre ring to four major European Points of Presence. The 70 Gbps of capacity provided by this new infrastructure will herald significant economic advantages for point-to-point video and data applications across Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

The KA-SAT infrastructure will be the new European platform powering the next generation of Eutelsat’s Tooway™ consumer broadband service, boosting consumer download speeds to 10 Mbps and uploads to 4 Mbps. At IBC, the new 77cm antenna and modem for Tooway™ will be on display for the first time. Currently available through Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ 6 and EUROBIRD™ 3 satellites, Tooway™ is already provided in Europe by more than 60 distributors in 30 countries. Leading telecom operators, ISPs and regional service providers have already integrated Tooway™ into their portfolio of broadband products, ensuring that homes and businesses beyond terrestrial networks can access digital services at high speed.

http://www.eutelsat.com/news/compress/en/2010/html/PR%203810%20IBC%202010/PR%203810%20IBC%202010.html

watty

Note that 77cm is the dish for VSAT, uplinks (transmission TO the Satellite) for return path to Internet on two way satellite systems are always much larger than receive only systems (i.e. Home TV) to avoid interference to neighbouring satellites and reduce the power needed by the uplink transmitter. 77cm rather than originally suggested 65cm is about x1.5 reduction in transmitter power needed.

The other new item (also of interest /relevance only to Internet usage) is the fibre ring and 10 rather than 8 or 12 gateways with a hierarchy of four major POPs.

scruffy66

watty wrote: »

Maybe Freesat is going to Partner and have "Real Digital" provide pay TV content?

It must be great for somebody to make up a new name and be taken so seriously so quickly,Who is real digital? Its ok no need to answer, i mean who
was boxer or one vision for that matter.

I dont think the BBC went to all the trouble to set up freesat to have it hijacked by somebody who wants to make money on the back of its hard work.

At the same time if it is inevitable that a commercial operator is going to come on the market using the free to air channels as the basis for a pay system, then it would make sense that freesat would sit up and take notice.

Maybe when the Board of Freesat were saying ,that they where considering adding Sky sports 1 and 2 , they were just sending a warning to real digital or who ever that if Freesat want to get involved in pay TV they will.

What ever Freesat decide to do, you can be sure it will be to secure Freesats Future.Rte should do the same. Let Real digital look after its own Future , by the way who's Future?

Macy0161

It's a long time since I've had pay TV, but a seperate Sports Sub would at least make me think about it, if similarly priced to BT Vision, although I'd like Eurosport in addition to Sky Sports 1 & 2. That'd apply to some Freesat Top Up TV method (do the higher end Freesat boxes have a slot?) or Real Digital (believe it when I see it, and doubt it would so competitive).

With regard to Saorsat, I think it might have a bigger take up than RTE think. My plan will be to upgrade to a Freesat receiver that'll handle a diseqc switch, and have all channels in the one list (our preference for full epg for UK channels rather than Irish channels (opposite to the DTT/ FTA Sat Combo)).

rlogue

Would that be via other channels or would the saorsat channels appear on the freesat epg? If you're off the epg then pvr programming will be a challenge.

STB

Macy0161 wrote: »

With regard to Saorsat, I think it might have a bigger take up than RTE think. My plan will be to upgrade to a Freesat receiver that'll handle a diseqc switch, and have all channels in the one list (our preference for full epg for UK channels rather than Irish channels (opposite to the DTT/ FTA Sat Combo)).

Freesat boxes are tied down to 28.2.

Not possible to integrate 2 MHEG5 channel lists.

Only way around this is for OPenPLi to be written into a combo box - hence no MHEg5 from anywhere but 7 day epg from Huffman tables and EIT.

watty

Unlike Sky HD that won't work with a Diseqc switch, most Freesat HD boxes will do Diseqc. However currently you would not have Saorsat channels on the Freesat EPG. But you would be better off than a generic FTA HD satellite box.

For those 2% to 7% needing Saorsat, even a generic FTA HD Sat box is a massive step forward. 5% to 8% currently can't get TG4 without Sky and over 20% can't get TV3 without Sky. Today.

We won't exactly know till next year. However my belief is that combi box is not the only answer as Saorsat is primarily for the people that can't get DTT.

At the minute apart from Vestel/Walker we are in the dark about actual Saorview certification.

It is possible to use MHEG5 from one source + EIT/DVB for all else.
It's probably possible if someone wanted to write it to have MHEG from two sources.

It's very early days as we still don't even have an Official Public Launch Date. Only a Technical Launch Date.

Macy0161

STB wrote: »

Freesat boxes are tied down to 28.2.

Not possible to integrate 2 MHEG5 channel lists.

I only have the cheapest freesat reciever, and I can add non freesat channels to the channel list of that. I assumed that if I had a receiver that would work with a diseqc switch I could add the Saorsat channels to the list in a similar manner, (with now and next epg for the saorsat channels).

That assumption could well be wrong though, although I guess there won't be a definitive answer until the service launches and someone tries.

scruffy66

watty wrote: »

Unlike Sky HD that won't work with a Diseqc switch, most Freesat HD boxes will do Diseqc. However currently you would not have Saorsat channels on the Freesat EPG. But you would be better off than a generic FTA HD satellite box.

Hi watty, i thought the HUMAX HD + was the only Freesat box that had Diseqc
switch built in, what other makes of Freesat HD or HD+ boxes out there have a Diseqc built in ?

And if Freesat [ and i know its a big if] do get a partner and start offering Sky sports 1 and 2 through a new top up Freesat box , do you think we would be able to access that service here?.

watty

1) No idea

2) I'm sceptical that Freesat will do payTv. If they do, it's likely to be UK post codes only. Why would they sell to Ireland? Freesat isn't officially marketed here at all.

Real Digital will sell to Ireland. But I'm sceptical that they will launch and even more so that they will stay in business. Sky can easly offer a Sport only mix or cheaper Sky Sport.

warlikedave

cant believe they wont include the nothern irish channels in the ROI version of DTT whether it be on DTT or sat...and yet we are providing our channels to the north..while we wait for a pay per view version of those channels

i think that should work both ways...for the same price each way - nada - 0....:mad:

watty

It's not definate at all that our channels will be on NI DTT
1) It may be TG4 only
or
2) TG4 + RTE1

It absolutely won't be the HD versions we getting on DTT by 2012
It absolutely won't include TV3 or any of the new channels.

We can get all the UK freesat anywhere, free
N.I. Should be able to get Saorsat free. That will likely kill anything more than TG4 on N.I DTT, and possibly even that.

scruffy66

Watty 2) I'm sceptical that Freesat will do payTv. If they do, it's likely to be UK post codes only. Why would they sell to Ireland? Freesat isn't officially marketed here at all.

Real Digital will sell to Ireland. But I'm sceptical that they will launch and even more so that they will stay in business. Sky can easly offer a Sport only mix or cheaper Sky Sport.[/QUOTE]


I would have to agree, it seems strange that Freesat would do pay Tv but
its even stranger that the head of Freesat say that they were thinking about it and she personally thought that it would be odd that Freesat would not do pay Tv as well.

Real Digital's real market is the UK, so what ever happens there will determine what happens here. I personally think real digital will never launch, unless they partner with Freesat and i cant see Freesat being interested

watty

But Real Digital have only found interest in Maplin in UK. They have latterly been aiming at Irish market. RTE using Saorsat as DTT fill is a blow to them, but realistically the day of FTV cards is past as they don't provide Geographic security, and even with Eurobird @ 28.5E it would be millions more expensive than Saorsat, when you add higher carriage costs for entirety of Saorview inc HD, call center for FTV cards, etc. Also In Northwest/Southwest/West, main areas lacking DTT, the Eurobird is a lot poorer than Freesat Astra 2D, really needs 80cm for rain margin compared with 44cm or less for Saorsat.

scruffy66

Here another link about Freesat/ pay Tvhttp://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/movers_and_shakers/article5779877.ece

join my shopping genie

a country should have a good satellite channels

watty

scruffy66 wrote: »

Here another link about Freesat/ pay Tvhttp://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/movers_and_shakers/article5779877.ece

that's last year, but seems clear:

“No, if you want a subscription service you go to a subscription-service provider,” says Scott.

Butch Cassidy

Right, newbie here looking for info. Can I tune this in to my Sky HD+ box via "other channels" or whatever?

rlogue

No Saorsat will not be available using a Sky box. You will need a seperate box, but the same box could be used if you're not worried about having an EPG as the Saorsat channels could be stored in the 'Other Channels' or non-Freesat channels in a Freesat box.