The Late Late Gay Byrne Irish Television Thread

Via the app? How? It’s all German channels and TV guides.

If you have Android, RTE/3 channels are available on an app called 'Mobdro' (for free)

No longer solely German, the RTE channels are there now and ONE and TWO are the HD versions, and I've just spent £14.99 for 12 months access to try it out. All the RTE services work too from the UK.

I'm only seeing German channels myself. Odd.

I've got Mobdro on my Nvidia Shield and can confirm that RTE 1, 2, Jr, TG4 and TV3 are on the app. However it's a faff scrolling to find them and the PQ isn't great considering the streams are pirate.

Here you go ....

Ah, not called TV Pro, called Live TV! Found it

Virgin Media Ireland have announced their distribution details for their sports channel. It doesn't look too good for non VM Ireland Customers who want to access it tbh. VM are offering full access to all their games via their own app for €20 p/m which is a rip off.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/virgin-media-to-charge-up-to-20-a-month-for-new-sports-channel-1.3563111?mode=amp

VM broadband & mobile customers will have free VM Sport for the first two months. It will be €10 p/m thereafter.

Virgin TV customers will get free access to VM Sports.

Re: Scheduling of Champions League matches for VM/RTÉ.

VM will have first pick for the 6pm on Tuesday nights. The 6pm game will also be FTA for viewers on VM1 (TV3) from September. RTÉ2 will have the 8pm kick off on the same night. This means that there will be no more FTA Champions League games on Wednesday nights anymore. They will be shown on VM Sport or Eir/BT Sport only.

Just to note here that the rights that VM obtained for the all of the matches for their new channel are all non-exclusive rights.

Eir/BT will still show the same amount of games for the CL/EL on their own channels for next season.

Eir put up a press release on their website to confirm this news.

https://www.eirsport.ie/all-champions-league-available-on-the-eir-sport-pack

Sky will still show all of the games for the Euro 2020 qualifiers & Nations League on their channels for UK & Ireland subscribers.

Yeah, it seems eir were (naturally) kind of put out by the implication that only Virgin Media customers - who can’t get the eir Sport pack - would be able to see Wednesday Champions League games and Europa League games.

Worth noting a few things - firstly, this all comes from an Irish Times article picked up by only one other media outlet so far. Virgin Media have yet to make any announcement of their own. Granted the Irish Times as the “paper of record” is usually regarded as one of the most reliable media outlets in the country, but it doesn’t mean plans couldn’t still be changed (but given the Champions League play off round is in what, six weeks, they’d want to make up their minds...)

Secondly, although eir will continue to carry coverage via the BT Sport channels, they’ll no longer be showing any coverage on their own channels. (That coverage had become pretty much defunct when BT obtained the rights however, since the BT Sport channels are actually more prominent than the eir Sport ones on the Sky EPG)

A somehow technical question, I know: does someone know if there are tight advertising limits for RTE and TG4, other than the one that dictates that Irish public broadcasters should show an average of 6 minutes of advertising and a maximum of 9 minutes?

Like how many advert breaks there should be according to the length of the slot etc. UK has these, for commercial broadcasters of course, but I can't find anything for both Irish commercial broadcasters and for RTE and TG4
Maybe limiting the number of ad breaks according to the length of the slot is a British restriction, mainly
The most I have found is the maximum "European" cap of 12 minutes of ads per hour plus a 10 minutes of ads per hour on children's programmes on commercial stations

Because in general, I noticed, a 60 mins or 55 mins slot of a 40ish mins drama on RTE tends to have 2 internal ad breaks, not three
Is this dictated by law, or is it simply RTEs sensibility?

These are the rules relating to commercial television, but they don’t apply to RTÉ and TG4, whose maximum advertising minitage is set by the Minister rather than the Authority:

http://www.bai.ie/en/download/128467

My understanding is that the RTE limit is average six minutes per hour, max nine minutes. I assume TG4 is similar.

Bit of a technical point regarding Virgin and the new pay sports, Virgin use an entirely different infrastructure to Eir to pump broadband into people's homes, and the rollout of this infrastructure is a lot more limited than that of Eir, plenty of towns across Ireland received the fiber broadband infrastructure and can choose to buy access to it from Eir, Vodafone or Sky while Virgin haven't gone near them nor intend to. The former two allowing access to a Internet streamed TV service for a little extra, Sky of course have their own Astra satellite services which you can get while choosing a different broadband package if you like. If you choose Eir you can still get the sports channels free on the Sky box by registering online.
This combination means that BT Sports will have a much bigger reach into Irish homes than Virgin media.