Saorview channels and Freesat

The Cush

The question "why can't the Saorview/Irish channels be broadcast on Freesat?" has been asked here fairly frequently.

This from a recent Dáil question

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

277. Deputy Dominic Hannigan
asked the Minister for Communications; Energy and Natural Resources his plans to make Saorview channels available on FreeSat; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40729/12]

Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Deputy Pat Rabbitte): In the UK, the public service channels for example BBC and Channel 4, are obliged to provide their channels throughout the UK freely over a digital platform. They have chosen to do this in two ways – using both a digital terrestrial network and also using satellite. Their satellite service, Freesat, is intended to provide for reception to the UK only but also covers Ireland through overspill.

In order to overcome copyright issues which are associated with broadcasting, the UK channels must purchase the rights to show their acquired content in Ireland as well as the UK. The copyright costs are proportional to TV viewer numbers so the additional cost for acquiring the rights to broadcast in Ireland is small. As an alternative approach, the UK could choose to encrypt the satellite service so that it could not be received in Ireland or elsewhere.

For the Irish channels to be freely available on the same satellite as the UK channels, the issue of copyright also arises. Irish stations would need to acquire copyright throughout the footprint area of the satellite, in the UK as well as Ireland, or to provide an encrypted service. RTÉ has informed us that both options are prohibitively expensive and that they have no plans to seek to place Saorview channels on Freesat.

In Ireland RTÉ has chosen to build its free to air digital network over two platforms - over a digital terrestrial network (SAORVIEW) and over satellite (SAORSAT). SAORVIEW is available to 98% of the population whilst SAORSAT has 100% coverage, covering only Ireland.

RTÉ has informed us that with SAORSAT it is possible to pick up the UK Freesat TV channels as well as the Irish TV channels by using a second Low Noise Block Down converter Feedhorn (LNBF) which is correctly aligned. SAORSAT therefore provides a mechanism whereby both Saorview and Freesat TV channels can be received.

Further information on SAORSAT is available at: www.rtenl.ie/broadcast/saorsat-digital-television.html.

http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2012092500071?opendocument#Broadcasting Services

Conor Hayes, ex-RTÉ CFO said the same to a Dáil committee back in Jul 2010.

Another innovation by RTE is promotion of its satellite option, Saorsat. Some members of the committee will be familiar with the equivalent UK service, Freesat. The BBC, ITV and a number of other companies have put their services on one of the wideband Astra satellites. The services are broadcast unencrypted, or “in the clear” as we call it. The trouble with those wideband satellites is that they have a very big footprint. If RTE were to be put up on a wideband satellite, its services would be in the clear to the UK, France, Holland and many other countries. One might ask why that should not be done, to which I would respond that we do not have the resources to purchase the rights to enable us to broadcast into those countries. We buy programming that allows us to broadcast to 4.5 million people. We do not have the money to broadcast to 100 million people. Therefore, the option taken by the BBC when Freesat was launched is not available to us.

http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/Debates%20Authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/committeetakes/MAJ2010071400003?opendocument

zg3409

This has been discussed many times here. RTE would need to buy the rights to show all films, sports etc in all of the UK and pay to have a channel number on FreeSAT. The costs for all of UK rights for Soaps, films, sports would be insane.

Sky carries them encrypted. The costs of encryption and decryption are crazy too. Saorsat has them for free but requires a different setup.

Basically the licence fee would be 700 euro if they did this or more.