Free to Air Tv for a novice?

Hatter

I've read some posts here about Free to air Tv using a PC. Well, as we all know too well, a TV licence here in Ireland is €152 a year and rising. Not to mention the cost of a basic NTL connection and then if you want cable etc. It keeps rising.

I have a AMD PC with an AS ROCK motherboard, 256MB DDR memory, 80GB hard Drive, CD RW, an external 8X DVD+/-RW and a Typhoon PVR TV BOX.
I have been capturing my old VHS tapes and Burning them onto DVD. Thats well and good. I can view Air TV with a basic antenna but only get the 4 Irish channels. I am in Dublin. If I plug my pipe lead into it I get the NTL basic channels. I thought about all of this and came to the conclusion that I am being ripped off. I want to close my NTL account and throw out my TV. No more licence fees and no more NTL payments.

I want Free to air TV, or freeware digital TV or whatever. I have heard a nasty rumour that the ROI doesn't allow free to air TV? Can anyone confirm?

And with the things I have on my PC now, what do I need to get free to air channels, not just Irish, but European or American? I have no satellite dish and would prefer not to have a dish outside on the roof, and I have no decoder or any cable box or alike. If I need a satellite....so be it, but if there is a good freeware compatible Antenna or whatever, better. DO I need a DVB card? As my thread title says, I am a Novice to this and anyone that I have emailed, including people at Typhoon, nobody can tell me exactly what I need to do in reasonably understandable terms, and in fact, nobody could answer my satellite dish queries either. So if there is anyone out there who reckons they can talk me through it by posting here, please, please, do so? Thanks.....

Baud

Hatter wrote:

I've read some posts here about Free to air Tv using a PC. Well, as we all know too well, a TV licence here in Ireland is €152 a year and rising. Not to mention the cost of a basic NTL connection and then if you want cable etc. It keeps rising.

[snip]
I thought about all of this and came to the conclusion that I am being ripped off. I want to close my NTL account and throw out my TV. No more licence fees and no more NTL payments.

I want Free to air TV, or freeware digital TV or whatever. I have heard a nasty rumour that the ROI doesn't allow free to air TV? Can anyone confirm?

have a look at
oasis.gov.ie

they claim: Every household, business or institution in Ireland with a television or equipment capable of receiving a television signal (i.e., an aerial, satellite dish, etc.,) must have a television licence.

doesn't look like you can do what you want without getting a TV license.

Once you have a tv license, you need some way of digitising the picture. If you want to do that from the terrestrial signal, that's a TV card with a PAL tuner. If you want to do it from a digital satellite dish, I think they all use DVB-S, so you connect the LNB to a DVB-S card. This probably isn't the right place to ask these questions though. Try Hosted->ICDG->*

Also, there's no CAM for DVB-S cards to get access to Sky smartcards that I'm aware of. So you can't get Sky, or anything encrypted under the Sky system (ITV, C4, etc). Even though they are free to view. You can get BBC etc, all the free-to-air ones.

L.

Hatter

Thanks for the advice, I have put messages up on the Terrestrial and satellite and broadcast pages.

However, if anyone reading this watches TV on their PC via Satellite, Antenna, or digital box or alike can they please tell me what I'd get in Dublin by way or Air TV with an Antenna, as opposed to buying a satellite dish and/ or DVB. Someone must watch tv that way?

Capt'n Midnight

Have a look on the terresterial forum http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=56

In Dublin you will get the 4 Irish channels from Three Rock or Kippure.

If you live in a high area or along the coast where there are already lots of BIG TV aerials then if you get an aerial as big and as tall as theirs you may get Northern Irish or Welsh TV - BBC / ITN / C4/ C5

Satellite - BBC 1,2,3,4,CBBC,Cbebies - most of the news channels etc. etc.
look on the satellite froum

shinobi

I've got a Hauppauge Nexus DVB-S card. It is pricey ~€250. Excellent card, You can buy a common interface for it if you wish to add add a cam later on. Very easy on the processor as well. At present on astra 2, you get All the BBC channels, ITV3, Lots of news & Shopping channels & some music channels.

Hatter

Thanks for the help folks,
Don't Astra 2 do some Spanish and German channels?

shinobi

Hatter wrote:

Thanks for the help folks,
Don't Astra 2 do some Spanish and German channels?

No, Astra1 on 19.5 Deg east has a good selection of FTA German channels & HispaSat on 30 West for Spanish channels.

Hatter

[QUOTE= HispaSat on 30 West for Spanish channels.[/QUOTE]

Is hispasat free to air?