When did Ireland first receive the British stations?

Probably Holme Moss, although Wenvoe is in Wales. The main BBC West transmitter these days is Mendip, near Bristol.

Removed

Was any TV receivable in Cork until cable and deflectors?

I assume Limerick and Galway were in the same situation too.

The later Cork deflectors (1980s) received welsh signals at a mountain site in Waterford and used a UHF network to rebroadcast them.

It was more of an unlicensed transmission network than a simple repeater.

Some areas also carried Eurosport and Sky One on UHF over the air. I'm not sure how that went unnoticed for so long.

They also used to insert scrolling community messages when they were under threat of closedown.

Seems that widespread public support just meant they couldn't be touched.

In the later years they were only providing UK terrestrial TV though.

Also they weren't really receivable in Cork City itself and generally targeted non-cable areas in the suburban commuter towns that are still not cabled.

Carrigaline for example has no active UPC cable despite being a pretty large population centre a short drive from Cork City.

Ballincollig seems to be partly cabled and I'm not sure about Midleton, Blarney, Glanmire etc

watty wrote: »

Really all were "unlicensed transmission network"

Passive deflectors (an aerial array feeding an aerial array) were almost non-existent, "a simple repeater" is an illegal unlicensed transmission. Some used an amplifier and then opposite polarity of aerial some distance way, These have poor performance and are illegal transmitters with disadvantage they create serious interference (too broad). Many used full CATV/MATV head ends, i.e. a real receiver for each channel, modulators and combiners and power amplifier. Much better performance and less interference.

Even a passive deflector could be illegal!

"Deflector" was a euphemism.

Broadcasting satellite channels on UHF was a BIT cheeky though!

In the later years, I think the Welsh channels were actually coming from a sat dish too as normal Channel 4 arrived and perfect reception...

At this stage its only a vague memory but I definitely remember their being Sky One and for a time Sky News and Eurosport on UHF.

It's a shame though that UPCs predecessors in Cork seemed to give up on cable in the mid 90s and started whacking MMDS antennae into areas that ought to have been cabled up.

I don't think UPC has really made any in serious attempt to expand their cabling down here either, just upgraded the original Cork Multichannel CATV footprint.

The CATV done in the original rollout is very high spec. Largely properly laid in underground ducts and using US style CATV cabinets. It carried way more analogue channels than other Irish systems back in the day. I think 23+ at peak using those Jerrold STBs.
It was very much like a 1980s American setup.

The stuff Chorus did was largely a hack job and they made the rather shortsighted decision to just provide the digital MMDS lineup using DVB-C on the Cork network which resulted in a lot is customers disconnecting and moving to Sky.

I rented 1990s era apartments which has been prewired for cable and UPC had underground taps etc but someone has used very poor internal wiring that couldn't even carry digital cable never mind broadband yet the signal 4 metres away at the tap was perfect. All they needed to do was pull a new cable through the existing duct.

UPC just abandoned it and refused to repair it or connect me. I find they're a really odd company at times.

It's very much improved since it became UPC but they really should cable up all the areas that Chorus skipped and abandoned on MMDS. They seem to have no interest in spending money on expanding the footprint though.

The current UPC network is pretty solid and provides digital only. There's no analogue service at all (well it may carry RTE.. Although I'm not sure if that ceased when DTT launched).

I swindled the NSA wrote: »

Some of the early 1930's Baird transmissions were carried on mediumwave radio transmitters (after regular radio programmes had closed down for the night)

In theory these should have been receivable throughout Ireland although whether anyone tried building the equipment to watch them is anyone's guess !


Why would relaying a commercial FTA channel be considered "cheeky" ? Surely it was a case of the more viewers the merrier ?

Maybe because Sky One wasn't FTA.

How many channels were on the analog cable systems ?

I remember visiting Cork (from Dublin) as a kid and bring memorised by about 26 channels and the, what then seemed high tech, descrambler that Cork Communications / Multichannel used.

Cablelink was fairly basic in comparison and the decoder was only used for sky movies and sky sports which we definitely didn't have in our household.

I don't remember not having satellite channels though. I guess I'm not old enough. I was brought up on a diet of TCC, Ternage Mutant Hero Turtles and DJ Kat! - it probably explains a lot! MTV used to actually be cool back then too before it discovered reality TV! I just remember watching very cool MTV Select VJs like Donna Air, Eden Harel, Cat Deeley... Also Zane Lowe etc etc ...and M2 ... So indie and cool that it was almost painful! Then it all fell apart and turned into reality TV nonsense!

I often think that access to television influenced social development here. Compare attitudes in the 1980s in rural areas pre-satellite that didn't have overspill signals and urban areas that had large cable uptake... It has to have had a profound impact.

I swindled the NSA wrote: »

It was for a while (late 1980's/early 1990's). The "cheekiness" of having Sky one would depend on when it was relayed,

It was well after encryption began - mid to late 1990s
It was encrypted when "sky multichannels" began ?