TV Reception in Swords

[The Mighty 890]

Hi all,

Does anyone know what the tv reception for the UK terrrestrials is like in Swords. Would I be able to pick them up from NI using a conventional arial?

I'm getting $kyDigital installed soon but want to have some tv available in the other rooms in the house.

Any word on ITV & C4 going onto SkyDigital at all?

Cheers gang.

TM890 :)

[Mike]

Most parts of Swords can recieve UHF signals from Northern Ireland although large mast and very high gain aerial are usually needed. (These are a common sight on rooftops in the area)

When I lived there a few years ago I had cable. While it was generally quite good the reception was affected by aircraft (flashing picture nd fluttering sound for a few seconds) and occasionally high pressure (Channel 4 after midnight was particularly badly affected for some reasons with S4C Wales visable in the background

ITV and Channel 4 are on $py digital but are blocked on irish boxes. The solution is to buy a box in Northern ireland register it to a UK licence payers address and reinstall it in the Republic

[John Fleming]

I was about to suggest that for the price of an aerial, you could pick up a second Sky box and a FTA UK card, which'll give you a little more than the aerial too.

[The Mighty 890]

Cheers for the info guys.

I was talking to a guy I know who installs Sky and he says that there's a likelihood that ITV and C4 will be available to Irish customers shortly.

As regards buying the box in NI and getting a UK FTA card, is it easy to switch from one box to the other? I assume you wouldn't have RTE and the other Irish terrestrials on the UK FTA card but it would be great to have 5 Live and 5 Live Extra also available.

Someone posted that S4C is available now; I'll have to brush up on my Welsh!!!

;)

[Mike]

Depending on what part of Swords you live in the price of the aerial will vary quite a lot

You might even have a go at installing one yourself


A Northern Ireland card will get all the UK channels plus the four Irish channels as far as I know

IMHO anyone who buys a digibox in the Republic without a UK card is a fool I mean even if ITV and Channel 4 do go on sky you still wont have BBC3, BBC4, ITV2 (small loss) Ch 5 etc

[Original Tyrone Gobshite!]

It should also be noted that ITV2 is only available on UK subs - not UK FTV cards.

[John Fleming]

My ideal Sky solution is to have a dual output lnb feeding two sky boxes, one with your sub card and the other with the UK FTV card. (Extravagant me actually has three dishes!)
Leaving cost aside, the advantage of this is that you could watch a sky channel and still record from a uk terrestrial and vice versa.

If possible a single box with a UK sub is also desirable - there are companies offering this. You would have all your channels (incl ITV2 and TalkSport) through one box, but will only receive RTÉ, TV Three terrestrially.

[Mike]

With a Northern Ireland sub you would have the best of both worlds.
All the benefits of a UK sub PLUS RTE/TV3 (TG4?)

[John Fleming]

It should be stated that RTÉ/TV Three are NOT available using a N Ireland sub. I'm assuming Mike meant RTÉ/TV Three terrestrially.

[Mike]

I stand corrected
I thought that RTE (and especially TG4) was to be made available to Northern ireland viewers (good grief agreement and all that ?)

[John Fleming]

Rights restrictions problems (eg Home and Away, Friends etc) with regard to UK channels - complaints particularly from 'five' - stalled it. It seems most likely that a 'best of home grown' channel might appear at some stage, rather than the channels as they stand.

I was about to edit the response above to also say...

With this in mind a card from Britain, rather than N Ireland would be more desirable, particularly to do away with those annoying BBC NI peak-time opt-outs which relegate decent programming to the wee small hours.

[Mike]

"those annoying BBC NI peak-time opt-outs"

I know a guy up here who got a Scottish aerial installed solely so that he wouldnt have to suffer "those patronising continuity announcers" on UTV