The SkyIreland/UTV conundrum

Charlie-Bravo

So I was sitting down with a friend yesterday talking about who provides what. UPC have a channel line up which makes sense, stick all the Irish and UK terrestrial channels in a row including UTV.

Sky Ireland on the other hand is a complete mess with BBC being up at 141 on the epg and other important channels being in the 200's. But the question arose, why the heck do you have to go into Other Channels to look at UTV (if you've added it)? I didn't have an good answer for this. Of course the only thing I could think of is that TV3 have an issue with it but you can easily get it anyways!

So what's the difference between UPC having UTV at position 109, which you can easily record on the digital+ box and SKy not being able to put it on the epg?

Minstrel27

TV3. You answered yourself

Charlie-Bravo

thought so, but it's ridiculous to think that it's there, free and unencrypted available to anyone who wants it via satellite.

You would think that it would make more sense to not have UTV on the UPC cable platform as there is no way of getting it over cable if its not being provided! So the real question, why do UPC have it and not Sky Ireland?

twinklerunner

astrofluff wrote: »

thought so, but it's ridiculous to think that it's there, free and unencrypted available to anyone who wants it via satellite.

You would think that it would make more sense to not have UTV on the UPC cable platform as there is no way of getting it over cable if its not being provided! So the real question, why do UPC have it and not Sky Ireland?

Because UPC (previously Ntl and before that Cablelink) had an agreement with UTV long before TV3 came in to existence .. and which also pre-dates Sky entering the Irish market

icdg

twinklerunner wrote: »

Because UPC (previously Ntl and before that Cablelink) had an agreement with UTV long before TV3 came in to existence .. and which also pre-dates Sky entering the Irish market

Cable has always had UTV* since it started, not only before TV3 came into existence, but long before either UPC, NTL, Cablelink or Sky itself came into existence. Providing the BBC and UTV was the reason cable started in the first place.

(*Or HTV in some areas. Some people in the 1970s even had both but that generally stopped after Channel 4 launched).

Cantona's Collars

icdg wrote: »

(*Or HTV in some areas. Some people in the 1970s even had both but that generally stopped after Channel 4 launched).

That jogs some memories:cool: