Petition for Irish FTV cards

TVDX

With signal strength from many analogue transmitters of RTE television services poor in most areas, isn't it time we had an Irish FTV card.
Why must we pay our TV licence and then pay Sky Digtial again for the right to watch our national channels in digital.
RTE have done nothing to help viewers get ready for the analogue switchover.

They have provided no information on the planned change to licence payers, don't seem to be developing any infrastructure to accomadate the change to digital transmissions and generally seem to be terrible and embracing the future.

A small step they could take would be to provide Irish FTV cards providing access to Irish channels without a subscription.
Similiarly, expired Irish subscription cards could also grant access to them.
It's about time we were able to watch RTE on satellite for free.

Do you think a petition is in order?.
Or should we just sign here and turn it into a big thread of opinions and then send them along to RTE and see what there response is?.

cormacl

Does one mean a freesatfromsky-like deal for Ireland.. could include receiver, dish, installation and then basic national set only.. RTE1,2,TV3 & TG4 and of course all the FTA channels (incl BBC)...

By using similar once-off install fees to the UK equivalent, this would allow for Sky to recuperate some of the h/w costs as well as sell extra packages to those who want them.

Then a card-only variant could also cater for existing hardware owners and ebay purchases etc... I personally have no issue with uncle Rupee doing this even if it gave him a stronger hold over the Irish audience.. because our friends in Montrose are not going to provide a viable alternative anytime soon and when they do, we're still going to have the bad reception areas.. some of which they still haven't solved in 40 years.

Something tells me this just won't happen... but yet again.. with Montrose now making some "movement" on digitial, Sky may consider an equivalent freesatfromsky in the same way they did with Freeview.

I know people get emotional about $ly etc.. but Ireland is a little fart of a country that just cannot pull-off things like Freeview in the same way the UK has.. everyone knows somebody in Ireland who has lived with real bad TV reception for 40-odd years.. digital terrestrial is going to need even better signal delivery.. to me personally satellite is the obvious answer and if that means getting into bed with a commercial outfit, so-be-it.. I'd rather pay a once-off to Murdoch for the privilige than see my licence hike yet again and still not solve the poor reception areas.

10000maniacs

There should be some kind of free digital service that carries all of the Irish channels that are funded by a tv license.
Whether that is a Freeview type service or an FTV card scheme or both should up for debate, but this debate should have been instantiated years ago.
Probably RTE are biding their time until a High definition format is rolled out in the UK so they can hitch a ride on somebodys bandwagon.

Round Cable

It will never happen, thanks to RTÉ's deal with Sky, they supply the transponder space and RTÉ don't pay a cent, what they thought was a nice deal lined Uncle Rups pockets further. Sky were not doing too well without the Irish channels. I don't know how much space would cost, but considering the amount of crappy FTA channels on Sky, Ireland's national broadcaster could afford it, once again RTÉ dropped the ball and screwed over it's audience yet again.

BBC: Licence fee, no futher subscription required
RTÉ Licence fee, TV advertisements, minimum €30 a month sunscription to view digitally.

You see the RTÉ admire the BBC for their quality programming and professionalism, and the BBC admire RTÉ for the amount they screw out of their licence fee payer, they could only dream about it.

About High Definition, considering that most new technologies are embraced aabout a decade after the BBC, eg Widescreen, 10 years after the BBC start transmitting in HD, RTÉ will too. :rolleyes:

byte

Correct me if I'm wrong, but RTE lease their own transponder and uplink themselves, but Sky carry the cost of regional encryption (ie. make them available to ROI only) and EPG placement. Maybe I am wrong

I'd assume RTE would get some money from TV3 (and possibly TG4?) also as RTE uplink TV3 along with their own channels.

Hagar

I stand in awe of your optimism.

Round Cable

byte wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but RTE lease their own transponder and uplink themselves, but Sky carry the cost of regional encryption (ie. make them available to ROI only) and EPG placement. Maybe I am wrong

I'd assume RTE would get some money from TV3 (and possibly TG4?) also as RTE uplink TV3 along with their own channels.

If that's the case maybe, they could go FTV, if they could work out a deal to pay for epg placement.

maisflocke

byte wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but RTE lease their own transponder and uplink themselves, but Sky carry the cost of regional encryption (ie. make them available to ROI only) and EPG placement. Maybe I am wrong

RTÉ get a free ride on a Sky transponder.

The only thing they do themselves is uplink from Montrose.......

Sky carry the cost of the transponder and encryption, but also pocket the subscription money.

For RTÉ its a great way to save money, for Sky its a great way to make money.

Mossy Monk

afaik Round Cable is correck

Sky pay for transponder space and encryption

what if RTÉ decided to pay for a transponder and broadcast from it independant of Sky. or is that against the terms of the contract

Hagar

maisflocke wrote:

RTÉ get a free ride on a Sky transponder.

Yeah, and it's us that get ridden.

moc63

I totally agree with tvdx,it is time we had a ftv card for irish channels.If a person has a tv licence they should be entitled to a ftv card just like in the uk.How you make this happen i dont know.Maybe there is some government department or watch dog we could email petions too.I dont think rte or sky will do anything unless there forced to.


regards
moc63

Round Cable

And the reply from RTÉ

"Regarding your query re Free to View card, RTE have no
plans to introduce a similar system."

It sounds like they can't be bothered, but in reality they actually can't (Sky deal) :mad:

Hagar

Round Cable wrote:

It sounds like they can't be bothered, but in reality they actually can't (Sky deal) :mad:

They did the deal because.... they can't be bothered.
Not the other way around. :mad:

SkepticOne

If RTE went down the route of providing free cards to licence holders, it would also be a good opportunity to leave behind the monopolistic Sky platform altogether.

A so called public service broadcaster should never enter into exclusive deals with the likes of Murdoch.

When does the Sky deal expire?

Mossy Monk

2008 i think

Zaphod

SkepticOne wrote:

If RTE went down the route of providing free cards to licence holders, it would also be a good opportunity to leave behind the monopolistic Sky platform altogether.

A so called public service broadcaster should never enter into exclusive deals with the likes of Murdoch.

If RTÉ wish to retain the existing base of digibox users, then they will still have to use the Videoguard system owned by NDS, which is in turn part of News Corp. Leaving the Sky platform altogether isn't possible unless digibox owners are willing to invest in new receivers.

legend99

Zaphod wrote:

If RTÉ wish to retain the existing base of digibox users, then they will still have to use the Videoguard system owned by NDS, which is in turn part of News Corp. Leaving the Sky platform altogether isn't possible unless digibox owners are willing to invest in new receivers.

So they'd have to negotiate some kind of deal liek the BBC to be available on the Sky Platform is it??

Bear in mind that a **** load of irish people would drop Sky without RTE.

Mossy Monk

legend99 wrote:

Bear in mind that a **** load of irish people would drop Sky without RTE.

i disagree as a **** load signed up without RTÉ

Ulsterman 1690

RTE are getting free transponder capacity from $ky but in reality transponder capacity on Astra 2 costs damn all (which is why all those moronic test channels and shopping channels are viable despite only having five viewers :rolleyes: ) compared to the cost of building and maintaining a national network of a dozen odd main transmitters and a hundred odd relays

RTE are basicaly being bent over the table by Sky because the deal is basically giving one of RTE's main competitors a selling point. If RTE had the b@ll$ to go for an alternative encryption system Sky would be forced into opening up access to the CA slots on their recievers. Plus RTE would have the option of switching off the encryption during "home produced" programming (as there are few if any rights issues with most of these) enabling people outside Ireland to view them

netwhizkid

I agree we should have a sat FTV card at least, i'd prefer if RTE went FTA though, as it'd give the ex-pats a chance to view then, anyway we are being so S*rewed by RTE and SKY together, we have to pay €155 a year just to have a tv, wheter we can recieve or not they don't care, then from 1st/Sept/2005 we will have to pay €30.50, to view the station, Where i live the terrestrial service is rubbish, i'd rather look at a welder light than watch RTE via the Aerial, it is so bad. What a rip-off, maybe this should be raised on the new show, "Rip-off Republic"

Zaphod

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

If RTE had the b@ll$ to go for an alternative encryption system Sky would be forced into opening up access to the CA slots on their recievers.

If Sky's past record is any thing to go by, I seriously doubt it. Just consider that their digiboxes are programmed to only receive FTA channels with SRs of 22000 and 27500 despite being physically capable of receiving others. Even then it's hardly user-friendly to add those channels.

They have maintained strict control over who can manufacture their boxes and their design specifications.

They have resisted any attempts to make a Videoguard CAM available for third party CI receivers, eventhough arguably by not doing so, they contravene EU law.

Look at how they dealt with the BBC, an organisation with much bigger clout than RTÉ, when they initially went FTA. What number on Sky's proprietary EPG is an RTÉ encrypted, for example, in their competitor's Viaccess system, likely to get?

And then there's this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1868140.stm

Even if all digibox owners in Ireland dropped their subscriptions to Sky in protest (highly unlikely), what's 350,000 subscribers here compared to 7.5M in the UK?

Hagar

Zaphod wrote:

Even if all digibox owners in Ireland dropped their subscriptions to Sky in protest (highly unlikely), what's 350,000 subscribers here compared to 7.5M in the UK?

That's a 4.7% drop in revenue plus total loss of all advertising revenue specifically aimed at those subscribers.

Not insignificant at all.

byte

maisflocke wrote:

RTÉ get a free ride on a Sky transponder.

The only thing they do themselves is uplink from Montrose.......

Sky carry the cost of the transponder and encryption, but also pocket the subscription money.

For RTÉ its a great way to save money, for Sky its a great way to make money.

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

Lennoxschips

Where's the petition? I'll sign it.

Greenman

Lennoxschips wrote:

Where's the petition? I'll sign it.

Me too!!!!

TVDX

I'll set one up.
Spent ages typing it up last night and the server for the petition site went down.
I will try again.