Well folks there’s only 152 days to go until the analogue switch is complete across Europe meaning if you have not got a new TV with an mpeg 4 tuner or a mpeg4 set top box to convert your analogue signal then you better get a move on !!! Hopefully people won’t leave it until the last minute which is midnight on October 23rd as there is expected to be a rush once people realise they can’t watch the six one news on RTE. As a lot of people in Ireland would subscribe to Sky or UPC the will not have to worry about the digital switch as their Irish channels currently come through on a digital platform. The problem for quite a few of these viewer arises when there is 3 or 4 TV’s in the house and only one or two TV’s have a Sky or UPC set top box and there is only Irish channels on the other 2 or 3 TV’s. There is a belief that once you pay monthly to one of these subscribers that the whole house is covered. Wrong. Terrestrial aerials are commonly situated in attics and out of site therefore people don’t realise they are feeding second living room, bedroom or garage TV’s so on October 24th there will be a realization that action needs to be taken to remedy this problem. In most cases buying a simple set to box and using existing cabling will do. In other cases fresh cabling, amplifiers, splitters etc will need to be put in place. Some people may even wish to go a step further and upgrade to a combi box allowing them to view not only Saorview but also over 100 quality satellite stations such as BBC’s, ITV’s, Channel 4, More 4, E4, Five, Five star, Five USA, great news channels such as Sky news, BBC news, CNN, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera Eng. F24, RT news plenty of kids channels, tons of music for all tastes and various other general interests. All in all it’s an amazing new age, a digital age where the broadcasting horizons are limitless and this is only the start. Expect Saorview to add many more channels over the coming years and more and more quality channels to go free to air. My advice : Get your equipment early to be prepared and avoid the rush !
