This type of Installer will destroy the Aerial business

Didn't read all the thread, too long, and after a while, too boring.

Regulation. Waste of time, and too little too late, and typically Irish, the regulators have no teeth worth talking about, and are a waste of government money, like Comreg, and a number of other "regulators" that are a waste of time and everything else.

Saorview is another Irish Fudge, too little too late, and as a result, doesn't meet the simple requirement of a straightforward simple to use system. For all it's shortcomings, Sky is easy to use, and only needs one remote for the basics. The Cable systems were also effective in that they merged Irish & UK on to one platform. Saorview doesn't do that, so it's messy.

Complaints about cowboys. Nothing new, it was the same with double glazing, CB radio, Intruder alarms, water softeners, and will be the same with solar panels, and any of the other "new" things that are happening, with very little real chance of solving it, partly because the real information about whatever technology it is will be "protected" by it's suppliers so that potential users can't actually find out too much about it. It's not just the "working" man that is not reliable. I've had more troubles with Accountants, Architects, Solicitors, Bankers, Builders and similar trades than I care to think about, and in most of the cases, the regulatory bodies of all of these trades will do damn all to protect victims of errors or malpractise, and even less to root out the bad practitioners. Another classic is the BER, would you trust an estate agent to know what they are talking about when it comes to things like correct levels of insulation, and the like, yet they were among the first to jump on that band waggon. Just wait till things like electric cars become more common. How many home charging points will be properly installed and set up, and how many will be bodges that are possibly dangerous or worse? Any takers on that one? I doubt it, because we all know what the likely answers will be.

How many Sky installers do a good job? Some, but based on my experiences over the time since 1990 when our first analog dish went in, and all the upgrades since, it's patchy, and despite being nearly at pension age, I now do my own work on dishes and the like, with the result that they work, and have done for a number of years, and don't do things like fail because the coax has split and let water right down into the receiver. A while back, I put a multiswitch in, and it was the best thing I could have done, and it meant I could at last get rid of a diabolical cable system that had never worked properly in the 20 years I've lived in Ashbourne. Things like cables across a roof ridge, and some of the other things highlighted here and in other places. Dishes mounted almost at head height on the front face of a property, using internal UHF quality co-ax, holes drilled in all sorts of inappropriate places inside and outside.

Time to move on. I've been looking all over, and there's still no easy way to get Saorview and the UK free channels easily in one box, and that's true on boxes and on the latest TV's, a friend has just bought a new Smart TV, and that can't merge the favourite channels of sat and terrestrial, despite being over €2000. It can do just about everything else, including 3D, but the basic simple concept of one place for all channels is just not there.

Like it or not, we're trapped by a pretty much failed capitalist system that's destroyed the value of way too many things in life, as was commented a while back, way too many people now now the cost of things, and the value of very little, and that's not been helped by the manner in which "competitive" pricing for just about everything we use had destroyed too much in the way of quality, pride in workmanship and so many other things that will one day be regretted by their passing.