TV3 available in NI and UK

DigiDec

It is being reported over on Digital Spy that this afternoon (Friday 23rd) TV3 is available to subscribers in NI and the UK, via other channels.

lawhec

Have it myself here...

watty

Nothing at 16.00 on FTA box or FTV card..
Perhaps only active UK sub?

Round Cable

Really wierd, if they really wanted to hit back at UTV, they need to go FTA.

Sparky

just out of interest i tried on my freesat card and all i get is this in a FYI banner.

BBC ONE for the East of england. Find out more about the east and the other BBC english regions at www.bbc.co.uk/england.

anyways if this stays ftv on subcards in the uk and NI, it may get added to the epg, and we could be soon expecting utv to be added to ours.

either that or sky maybe trying to lure people into sky in the uk by offering tv3??

eirman

It's gone now !!!

DigiDec

DigiDec wrote:

It is being reported over on Digital Spy that this afternoon (Friday 23rd) TV3 is available to subscribers in NI and the UK, via other channels.

TV3 may be available as reported here by Northern correspondent to NI viewers but it is definitely not available in England Scotland or Wales.

In those areas with a family pack and above, if you manually tune in TV3 -you get the "08" message...
"this channel is not available"

I know this because I have an English sub.

Foggy43

We had TV3 here in London for about 8 to 9 hours yesterday. It has gone now.

What has happened in Northern Ireland?

We had TG4 for a few hours one day a while back. A repeat of what happened yesterday.

Charles Slane

There was speculation that TV3's (short-lived) availablity to Sky subscribers in the UK yesterday might be something to do with ITV's upcoming Free to Air status. The thinking was that TV3 might either go FTA themselves (unlikely given their contract with Sky) or become available to Sky subscribers through the "Other Channels" feature (presumably as some sort of consolation prize for not making a fuss over the ITV channels availablity).

Certainly an interesting few months ahead with Sky 3's arrival, ITV4 (FTA?, on the Irish EPG?), ITV1 going FTA (will UTV ever get on the Irish EPG?), More4 (FTA? Irish EPG?).

Could turn out to be a bumper time for folks with free to air boxes.

It's all to play for!

Tony

Interesting theory Charles, makes a lot of sense. If true it will put an awful lot of pressure on RTE to go FTA

Charles Slane wrote:

There was speculation that TV3's (short-lived) availablity to Sky subscribers in the UK yesterday might be something to do with ITV's upcoming Free to Air status. The thinking was that TV3 might either go FTA themselves (unlikely given their contract with Sky) or become available to Sky subscribers through the "Other Channels" feature (presumably as some sort of consolation prize for not making a fuss over the ITV channels availablity).

Certainly an interesting few months ahead with Sky 3's arrival, ITV4 (FTA?, on the Irish EPG?), ITV1 going FTA (will UTV ever get on the Irish EPG?), More4 (FTA? Irish EPG?).

Could turn out to be a bumper time for folks with free to air boxes.

It's all to play for!

lawhec

Bah! Gone now!

Earthman, it was available to viewers in Britain with Sky subs as well but it was disabled late last night, same up here.

Richard

Northern Correspondent wrote:

Bah! Gone now!

Earthman, it was available to viewers in Britain with Sky subs as well but it was disabled late last night, same up here.

Something similar happened in 2000 when the BBC channels were temporarily available in ROI.

Mossy Monk

i remember that. lasted for a few days and the excitement that ensued

those were simpler times

Sparky

yeah, remember years ago on the old service, it was hacked nearly a week after new cards came out. so any channels you shouldnt get you could get

mickd

Tony wrote:

Interesting theory Charles, makes a lot of sense. If true it will put an awful lot of pressure on RTE to go FTA

Not as long as RTE are on analogue, if this was to be switched off then that would be a different situation. I say RTE will leave it till the last minute to make their move. TG4 would beneifit greatly from switching FTA because of their program output. TV3 will loose big time as its little more than ITV1 ROI.

Tony

RTE being on analogue makes no difference whatsoever, the pressure will come from advertisers if viewing figures drop which may well happen if people ditch cable in favour of FTA satellite.

mickd wrote:

Not as long as RTE are on analogue, if this was to be switched off then that would be a different situation. I say RTE will leave it till the last minute to make their move. TG4 would beneifit greatly from switching FTA because of their program output. TV3 will loose big time as its little more than ITV1 ROI.

watty

Agreed Tony.

In fact in Co. Limerick I encounter folks with Sky subs and _NO_ TV aerial, asking me how they get RTE if they cancel Sky.

I wired up an Aerial & distribution system at weekend. The viewer only had Sky Digibox RF2 "eye" in bedroom (Single RF channel) and now has RTE1, 2, TV3, TG4, Sky, Nokia MediaMaster9800 digital and living room VHS set. I warned that playing DVD via VHS onto RF system might not work due to "macrovision" and offered options of a Macrovision remover or external RF modulator.

Removing Macrovision so as to use VHS a "modulator" for another room definately is not piracy.

I think on some DVD players there are codes on Remote to disable Macrovision.

Sky box office via Digibox deon not work even on SCART to our Salora TV. Macrovision on it makes top 6" of picture tear and flicker!

The Westerner

With everything going FTA or rumoured to be going FTA whats all this going to do to the cost of acquiring programme rights for RTE and TV3 considering that the irish stations pay way less than BBC and ITV for buying American programming? Surely RTE would prefer the FTV route and get off its bloody arse and provide ROI Sky viewers with FTV cards instead of having to pay 30 euros per month to watch them on satellite + plus your tv license!

Mossy Monk

why do people assume RTÉ can go FTV easily. do you think Sky would do it cheaply

The Westerner

True. It would cost RTE to set up an FTV system. But surely no one should have to pay twice for a product which is the case in ROI at the moment if you want to watch RTE TV on a Sky Digibox.

watty

Danmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands can afford to do it.
Some charge an annual administration fee for the Card.

The Encryption costs Sky almost nothing. They charge nearly 100 Millions for this. Then they will either charge the customer or the Broadcaster about £20 per card issued when the true cost of administration & card & Call centre works out about £5 per viewer.

Same also with EPG. The customer must provide the information in automatic machine readable format AND pay for the satellite bandwidth (the transponder bandwidth). Sky gets about £200,000 per epg or more for almost no cost.

BBC Prime subscriptions use a card issued direct by BBC. They are NOT available in UK, but can be purchased in Ireland. It uses Viaccess. The Beeb did NOT go to Viaccess for FTV because of the large base of Sky boxes which will ONLY take a Sky card.

But RTE has locked themselves into a closed platform (Sky) so can't use the 1/10th cost Viaccess option.

They can only go FTA or pay vast sums to Sky, under present deal they get Sky encryption and carriage too, FREE, doning their own uplink.

Since RTE regard Satellite as "wireless cable", a kind of foriegn MMDS, only for Pay viewing, this would to accountants in Montrose / Donnybrook seem a brilliant deal.

Macy

TV3 going FTA could be a great tatic in response to ITV's decision. They already pay sod all for their ITV programmes (should be less with ITV FTA), and I reckon they'd do alright with the irish in the UK for their news and sport output (it's not great, but it's all relative). Ignoring the fact that significant parts of this country can't get it on analogue anyway...

Darren

I think Setanta will have an awful lot to say about RTE or TG4 going FTA and hence being available in the UK.