Saorview switchover = 4 years on

Mr Sea Wolf

I always thought that the advertising campaign was very over the top at the time, which led to a lot of cowboy installers and people who had sky or cable thinking they too had to buy new televisions.

icdg

Moved to terrestrial

Digifriendly

DSO wasn't until October 2012 IIRC so its only 3 years and 3 months since we all went digital.

Sam Russell

Saorview launch was on May 26th 2011, and this launch followed endless years of testing.

The fact that RTE and Rabbitte chose to go for a second launch in Oct 2012 was their choice, but full service was available to over 90% of the population for the last 5 years.

We still await HD from TV3, TG4 and UTVi although they broadcast these on other platforms.

The Cush

Sam Russell wrote: »

The fact that RTE and Rabbitte chose to go for a second launch in Oct 2012 was their choice,

Oct 2012 was ASO, there was a soft launch in late Oct 2010 with TV3 /3e missing from the line-up at the start. RTÉ2 HD followed in early Dec.

Gonzo

the best thing about Saorview switchover in my area was suddenly being able to pick up the main FreeView channels in relatively good condition from 24th October 2012, previous to that date the analogue channels were barely visible like watching through a snowstorm. Since Saorview has since launched a second Mux unfortunately that blocked off a FreeView mux of same channel number which used to get us Sky News, Dave etc through the aerial.

Sam Russell

The Cush wrote: »

Oct 2012 was ASO, there was a soft launch in late Oct 2010 with TV3 /3e missing from the line-up at the start. RTÉ2 HD followed in early Dec.

The REAL launch had Rabbitte up at RTE on the 26th May 2011 spouting all sorts of Sh..e launching Saorview and appearing on all the news programmes. He then disappeared for 17 months to do the customary repeat show. That is what they do so well in television - repeats. They advertised with silly cartoons on Saorview for those who did not have it instead of putting a notice on the analogue signal where the people who didn't have it were watching - daft.

The'soft launch' was just more 'testing' or was it 'trials' - cannot remember which word was in vogue at that particular time as they used to interchange them. Saorview started in August 2008, although it was not called that at the time. It followed on directly from the BT trials/tests but in MPEG4 rather than MPEG2 - which killed my participation until I got a STB.

Saorview has been one disappointment after another - and always later than expected.

Atlantic Dawn

The biggest disappointment is the brutal 1 model DVR they have, rubbish interface and design. When it initially launched the Walker DVR was over €200, it's now a more reasonable €100. They need to add TG4 and TV3 in HD and could also do with adding a RTE2+1 channel and adding TV3+1.

The Cush

Sam Russell wrote: »

The'soft launch' was just more 'testing' or was it 'trials' - cannot remember which word was in vogue at that particular time as they used to interchange them. Saorview started in August 2008, although it was not called that at the time.

Prior to Oct 2010 was the pre-launch network engineering test transmissions, upgrading, building and tweaking the transmitter network. Four main transmitter masts were replaced in this period.

Sam Russell

The Cush wrote: »

Prior to Oct 2010 was the pre-launch network engineering test transmissions, upgrading, building and tweaking the transmitter network. Four main transmitter masts were replaced in this period.

All excellent work done by the engineers for which they should have been congratulated - particularly during a very cold winter. Three Rock kept going during all this time, and this was/is my local transmitter. Maybe others suffered but I just suffered frequent disappointments.

I launched my own low-cost STB to combat the rip-offs being perpetrated by the large retailers and went to a lot of trouble to make the STB easy to install - just plug it in and connect it up and it self tuned.

However, that box is now difficult to use because of 2RN/RTE's disgraceful manipulation of the signal with 38 blank channel headers that screw up non-approved boxes and the two data channels put in position one to screw up a few more boxes and TVs (like my own LG **LD490). No-one from RTE or 2RN would explain why the signal was manipulated that way. BAI and Comreg wanted to know about it.

They also suddenly altered the signal to render all Freeview PVRs (series link) inoperable here even though that signal worked with the sole approved PVR.

Apparently, 2RN have no commercial interest in the approval system.

Five years on I still have questions unanswered.

The Cush

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

The biggest disappointment is the brutal 1 model DVR they have, rubbish interface and design. When it initially launched the Walker DVR was over €200, it's now a more reasonable €100.

It launched at €230 but is down to €89.95 now in Powercity. Clearing stock before the new Freesat developed boxes launches it would appear.

The Cush

One thing I was disappointed with was Saorview's Brian Geraghty's brief engagement with people here on boards where a lot of the discussion on the launch was going on. Unfortunately he did get a lot of abuse from the legit trade installers here regarding the cowboy trade but it could've been handled better rather than deleting the specific thread and abandoning the forum completely. A well moderated Saorview "Talk To" forum would've been the answer.

colossus-x

I was living in Booterstows south Dublin in 2009 when I picked it up by accident looking for UK freeview as I had a dual digital/analogne receiver in my computer so kinda got it for free. Now funnily I don't have it set up at all and if I hear of anything worth watching I watch it on RTE player and that's rare enough.

The Cush

Gonzo wrote: »

Since Saorview has since launched a second Mux unfortunately that blocked off a FreeView mux of same channel number which used to get us Sky News, Dave etc through the aerial.

And this is likely to happen again with another chunk of TV spectrum to be lost to mobile use in the next 4 years or so with much tighter reuse of frequencies in these islands, transmitter directional restrictions to avoid co-channel interference. DTT frequency replanning is underway and should be completed in the coming months.

Replanning to clear TV from the channels 49-60 is currently underway in conjunction with the UK. It is expected that TV services will clear the channels 49-60 by about 2021, creating a second digital dividend. Associated with that will be much tighter reuse of frequency channels. In these circumstances reception of TV services outside their core service area cannot be guaranteed. Thus people may find that where they are or have been receiving UK TV signals from Northern Ireland or Wales they may not longer be able to do so as the frequencies may be used by neighbouring area Irish TV transmissions.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/communications/en-ie/spectrum/Pages/DTT-Spectrum.aspx

Mr Sea Wolf

The Cush wrote: »

One thing I was disappointed with was Saorview's Brian Geraghty's brief engagement with people here on boards where a lot of the discussion on the launch was going on. Unfortunately he did get a lot of abuse from the legit trade installers here regarding the cowboy trade but it could've been handled better rather than deleting the specific thread and abandoning the forum completely. A well moderated Saorview "Talk To" forum would've been the answer.

I wouldn't blame him for getting fed up, one thing that was very common in this country was people who had cable or sky thinking that they needed an new saorview television or saorview box to continue getting their cable or sky, it was always coming up on television and radio phones ins.

Mr Sea Wolf

People thinking they needed a "digital aerial" was another thing at the time.

tphase

Mr Sea Wolf wrote: »

People thinking they needed a "digital aerial" was another thing at the time.

yep - I got that one from an installer. Insisted he was right even when I told him I knew he was talking bollox.
Now if he'd just said I may as well to replace my ancient wide-band aerial with a new group aerial while he was up the pole, he would have got the job. Did it myself in the end, piece of piss.....