Posted on August 10, 2007 - by John

More Televisions Channels added to Irelands Digital Pilot Service

Minister Kileen believes that Ireland will adopt to digital terrestrial prior to the EU deadline of 2012, stating “I believe that Ireland must move much quicker than that. I expect the development of a national public service and commercial deployment of digital terrestrial TV services in mid 2008, to ensure that Ireland doesn’t get left behind in the coming broadcasting revolution,”. Richard Delevan would disagree with him though, he states in his most recent article:

“Ireland has yet to produce anything like a sensible plan to move towards digital, and there will be plenty of arguing about how to get there and who should pay? What kind of boxes will there be? How much will you have to pay to get one? There is, however, what may be an even bigger question: what to do with the airwaves we’ve been using for TV for the past 50 years?”

So will it work, possibly, but with caution hopefully, new channels have been added to the test scheme, both sports channels from Setanta Sports. Chrrently the offering of channels and radio stations include:

TV – RTÉ 1, RTÉ2, TV3, TG4, Ch6, BBC3, BBC4, CBBC, Cbeebies, BBCNews 24, Sky News, Sky Sports, Setanta Golf, Setanta Ireland, Extreme Sports, UKTV History.

Radio - Radio 1(FM), Radio 2, Lyric FM, R na G, Radio 1 (AM), Today FM, Newstalk, Dublin’s 98fm, SPIN 1038, East Coast FM, DAP ALL 80’s, DAP Mocha

Of course most of these channels and much more are already available via a satellite or cable/MMDS system in Ireland from UPC or SKY, but this terrestrial service will replace the old analogue service, which will be eventually switched off, if all goes to plan. In the UK this switch off will affect those people who can currently avail of free BBC using an aerial in Ireland, once switched off the reception will be dead.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!