The Irish Thread

The new free to air digital terrestrial service 'Saorview' is launching today. It is being officially opened by Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte TD later today.

The channel line up consist of
1 RTÉ One
2 RTÉ Two HD (downscaled to non HD viewers)
3 TV3
4 TG4
5 RTÉ News Now
6 3e
7 RTÉ Jr
8 RTÉ One +1
200 RTÉ Radio 1
201 RTÉ Radio 1 Extra
202 RTÉ 2FM
203 RTÉ Lyric FM
204 RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta
205 RTÉ Pulse
206 RTÉ 2XM
207 RTÉ Choice
208 RTÉ Gold
209 RTÉ Junior and RTÉ Chill

RTÉ News Now is now launched on Saorview and has re-freshed it's presentation.
Before: from www.tv-live.org.uk
http://www.tv-live.org.uk/wb/media/rtenews/rtenewsnow/rtenewsnow18.jpg

After:
http://www.skyidents.com/resources/saorview.JPG

Very nice new look for RTE News Now! Well done Saorview! Exciting indeed! Shame UPC couldn't be bothered to secure the new channels for launch today.

It's not like we're missing much on UPC. 3e is already on UPC. RTÉ News Now is available on the internet. RTÉjr is just a simulcast of RTÉ2 while it runs, and then just a repeat of what was just run on RTÉ2. RTE1+1 is, well, what it says on the tin, and only runs in the evening anyway.

UPC could do with RTÉ Two HD (if only to shore up their quite terrible HD service), though at present only sporting events (and even then, only OB footage) will be in HD for the immediate future.

Why is it RTE 2 in HD?

I guess it's purpose is to ensure that all Soarview receivers are HD-compatible from day 1. A clever bit of future-proofing? Not to mention the fact that it's an actual HD channel (some of the time) in a prime EPG slot, which is obviously a bonus (does RTÉ One have regional variations? That could explain why Two is HD, not One).

RTÉ Two has lots of sports events and imports which are filmed in HD. RTÉ One doesn't have any regional variants, but it doesn't have any HD programing.

All very exciting, RTÉ TWO HD has started broadcasting with their HD DOG this afternoon. RTÉ ONE +1 is also listed to start broadcasting from 19h, at which point till it will be showing the 6.01 news along with RTÉ News Now. Lots of repeats there.

I Don't have Saorview and I don't really understand how RTÉ Two HD works, I thought there was now just 1 version of RTÉ Two 'RTÉ Two HD' and it was downscaled on non HD set top boxes. On the Sky SD version there is just the original RTÉ Two logo how does it have two separate DOGs one for SD and one for HD if there the same channel. Or do all Saorview viewers regardless of having HD see a HD DOG, and just Analogue, UPC and Sky see the original DOG.

Currently RTÉ TWO HD is only available on Saorview. There is no SD version. They up-scale everything and appear to be showing the HD DOG full time. It's not available on UPC or SKY, but I would imagine if/when UPC work out carriage, it will be on a separate EPG slot as BBC ONE HD is today. Naturally if you don't have HD and are using a Saorview box, the HD will be downscaled, but the logo will remain.

Thanks for explaining that, patrickm

That would indeed be the case, as standard UPC and Sky boxes can't handle MPEG4, so the solution Saorview have chosen of just one channel wouldn't work.