They love to brag about their HD studios yet, unless you have the HD channel on Sky or Virgin, you have to suffer their abysmal SD picture quality. If it was even normal full res SD it would be fine but it isn't and it's a disgrace.
A similar point was brought up in another thread and rather than derail that thread I’ll maybe address it here. Both posters speak as if pay TV was the exception rather than the rule. The fact is that according to the latest (Q4 2017) Comreg Quarterly Key Data, 65% of households have pay TV. This is a decrease of 6% over the last five years, but it still represents a decent majority of Irish households. Every single pay TV household (except a very small number of analogue cable homes - only about 14,000 now) has access to TV3 HD.
Look, it is a shame TV3 HD isn’t on Saorview. We know the reason why - it’s a regulated rate card that makes it very expensive for anyone who isn’t RTE to go HD on that platform. But the majority of Irish households do have TV3 HD, and it shouldn’t be portrayed as if the reverse was the case.
A similar point was brought up in another thread and rather than derail that thread I’ll maybe address it here. Both posters speak as if pay TV was the exception rather than the rule. The fact is that according to the latest (Q4 2017) Comreg Quarterly Key Data, 65% of households have pay TV. This is a decrease of 6% over the last five years, but it still represents a decent majority of Irish households. Every single pay TV household (except a very small number of analogue cable homes - only about 14,000 now) has access to TV3 HD.
Look, it is a shame TV3 HD isn’t on Saorview. We know the reason why - it’s a regulated rate card that makes it very expensive for anyone who isn’t RTE to go HD on that platform. But the majority of Irish households do have TV3 HD, and it shouldn’t be portrayed as if the reverse was the case.
That's a fair point but that still means at least 35% of viewers only get TV3 in SD and I don't know if all the pay TV households get TV3 HD (do you not have to pay for the HD subscription to get it on SKY?) My point on the other Thread was that if you're watching in those 35% of homes and RTE1 HD and TV3 SD are showing the same programme you'd have to be blind not to see the difference and choose the better picture. Plus on top of that RTE1 is the natural Home in Ireland for any big event like the royal wedding or other big news events.
To be fair TV3 News has improved greatly since the closing of UTV Ireland. It's the one part of the operation that isn't second rate. But it could be the greatest News organisation in the world and people in Ireland would still watch RTE 1 when a big event happens.
To be fair TV3 News has improved greatly since the closing of UTV Ireland. It's the one part of the operation that isn't second rate. But it could be the greatest News organisation in the world and people in Ireland would still watch RTE 1 when a big event happens.
Personally I prefer TV3's current 'Channel 5 News' done properly format over the stale and dull RTÉ bulletin, which even after the changes to the Six One line-up is still dull. It makes you respect how the BBC have modernised without dumbing down too much.
Sorry, you are right - on Sky (only) you need to take the HD pack to get TV3 HD. This isn’t the case for RTE/TG4 HD and for some reason I had thought that applied to TV3 too.
Be careful what you wish for... Liberty Global do have a stake in ITV, don’t they ? Not outside the realms of possibility that they might one day want to increase it.
It's interesting you raise this, because there's something causing them to hesitate with the rebranding and I'm wondering whether Liberty Global is considering a long term strategy of taking over ITV completely, which would surely involve extending the ITV brand to TV3.
Noticed that DW anchor Anne O'Donnell has turned up on be3 tonight presenting the 7 and 10 bulletins. Apparently she's been signed up to present the 3e heads.
RTE ONE, RTE TWO and RTE NEWS NOW are now available on the German based TV Pro service, which can be subscribed to in the UK via iTunes and displayed on AppleTV.