You can get a good quality HDMI cable from amazon at a fraction of the price you quoted.

What’s with all the thumbs down?
Is there an analogue army on the loose here?

Same… My friend got a Digital tv up the North and it only picks up on the Digital Radio. TV sound – but NO picture because of the difference in MPEG3 + 4 !!! :(

We have a one of them tellies with saorview built in, so far it’s the usual RTE channels, 3e, RTE jnr and TV3 but on the menu there’s about 20 channels labelled “future service”, knowing RTE the will put emphasis on future so you can expect new RTE channels in mid 2034

Daire, if your old tv can take a sky box or even the old NTL box it will still be able to connect to a soarview box without any problems. You just won’t be able to see it in HD!

[Tony Stanley] I’m not interested though. I have a TV in the house at the moment but we don’t actually watch any broadcast TV, it’s used for DVDs and streamed media. Having mistakenly and stupidly answered the door to the license inspectors a while back I’ve ended up paying the license for the last few years. At the moment I’m required to, because I have an ‘apparatus that is capable of receiving TV signals’ . If however the analogue signal is turned off that won’t be the case anymore.

Daire, unfortunately the set is still a receiver of television signals, regardless of whether the signal is analogue or digital. It’s still capable of doing so (you can occasionally get TV broadcasts from other countries, too), so I think it’s still very likely that you will have to pay the licence fee. Bit crap though, maybe the law governing this should be altered to take the digital services into account.

Unfortunately Daire “free to air” digital TV is a misnomer, you’ll still need to cough up e160 a year for the privilege of watching Miriam O’ Callaghan in HD

daire, if you only watch d.v.d’s and streams, then maybe you could do so through your p.c, get shot of the t.v and buy a big monitor, then you might be able to bypass needing a licence,not sure but its worth checking up.

ire,

you need to get yourself a computer monitor that doesnt have a TV receiver in it. its that device that allows your tv to accept a signal from a set top box or ariel. that is what you’re paying the licence for. its only if you can show them there is no receiver in the monitor that they wont fine you or ask for tv licence.

if your dvd player takes only a scart input/output get yourself a scart to composite adapter (google it) and a vga to composite adapter to connect that into a computer monitor. there are some vga to scart adapters, probably online buy only.

it may seem like a lot of hassle but considering these two cables will probably set you back about 30quid as opposed to your 160quid licence fee its worth the effort!

you can watch RTE online without a licence fee, and get 4OD for access to channel 4′s stuff, itunes for movies and pretty soon you’ll be able to subscribe to a bbc service outside the UK so the licence fee is becoming more redundant by the time we go digital.

Hi Gavin, that’s happening on the same date as in the Republic. Will add that to the article now.

If its a digital tv, you should be able to tune the digital channels in without a box. However, you might need a new aerial, depending how far you are from the mast (about ?30). If its a analogue tv, then you will need a box, either a SV box or another type, try your local electrical superstore for one or the net, I think Saorview are way too pricey.

Since the box costs abour €100 – If it is the case where they decide to get a new tv because of the changeover, they could buy a new saorview tv, instead of just the box. This should help: http://www.saorview.ie/products-retailers/saorview-approved-product-listings/

You should try http://www.tvtrade.ie/saorview-digital-television.html

He has boxes for as low as 45. It’s a once off fee for the box, there’s no annual subscriptions to be paid, (yet). He also has some videos and pages on his site explaining about saorview and how to connect the boxes etc.

I’m not sure about the Sky/Upc part of this article. I know that you’ll get rte 1, 2, tv3 and tg4 but they have yet to confirm or deny that they’ll carry the extra tv channels and radio stations that are available through the saorview box.

Just to mention that Saorview have stated that other boxes such as freeview and the digital tick ones are not approved on the saorview system and may not be capable of decoding the saorview signal.

In the UK, Freeview and Freesat ate separate platforms with some channel differences (e.g. Dave on Freeview CBS on Freesat).

Our Saorsat system will be a copy of Saorview that’s aimed to be a back-up of Saorview and to target the last 2% of the country that can’t pick up the terrestrial signal. There’s no launch date because it’s using a different system that will specifically target Ireland with no overspill.

The problem with saorsat is that it’s going to be on a different satellite (at 9 degrees east) to sky/freesat (28.2 degrees east). At the very least, you’ll need a dual lnb holder if you have one of the bigger solid dishes and a ka lnb for saorsat. Plus they can be a bit of a pig to tune without specialist equipment. Otherwise a separate dish will be required. There is a proposed dish on their website to get around planning laws,
http://www.saortv.info/satellite-saorsat/