IPTV providers in Ireland..

Magnet is the only one, and only decent if you about <2km from exchaneg on ADSL2 or else on Fibre. It is a very limited offering compared to Comcast as it is mostly just a very low channel count Cable TV clone at poorer quality than Digital (much much poorer than Satellite) and almost non-existant VOD.

see their website for lineup. Magnet TV is generally regarded as very poor compared to NT: or Sky in quality and lineup. Also you can't have more than one setbox with different channel on each (trivial on Sat or Cable or DTT) unless you have fibre to the home.

Nobody else. Why?

1) Only Cable TV in Ireland can really support it and UPC needs to fix that network to have Digital TV and Broadband and Phone for all its subscribers. Even so, UPC's network after upgrade probably does nopt have BW for VOD.

2) Rights issues are considerable for VOD. See the sort of VOD catalogue Comcast has. It is OK, but not matching the hype.

3) Demand. There is little market for it. There is more demand for HDTV which is not feasible on ADSL2 (VDSL needed).

Without fibre to curb or at least Cable TV with fibre to end of street, VOD aspect of IPTV in real time is not possible at quality.

One solution is a hybrid approach, where a background IP stream fills part of local HDD of PVR and main channels are actually DTT, Cable or Satellite. You get instant high quality VOD. BT's new Freeview/IPTV service (not possible in Ireland) seems to be this.


Some hotel systems are essentially IPTV.