Zag would you have any more details - I found the boards site confusing, doesn't seem to be for newbies to dtt, in particular
- is there set top boxes to get the irish channels on dtt? Do you need an outdoor aerial with these or just plug in the set top box thanks.
Just last week, someone somewhere got one of their fingers out and launched a brand - saorview. This means that when you go into your retailler in a few years all you should have to ask them is "Does this telly (or set top box) do saorview ?" and if they answer "yes" then you can be sure it will pick up Irish DTT channels.
Right here, right now, there is nothing in the shops with this branding but there are plenty of TVs & set top boxes that meet the specifications.
Regarding the boards discussion - the whole problem with this area is that *because of the lack of a working information campaign* from the Government or anyone else there is no clear set of information. The saorview branding will help this situation in the future.
At the moment there are three levels of understanding of Irish DTT -
1) expert, someone who works in the industry and knows all the nitty gritty - very few of these. They can explain to you how yer MPEG4 is different from yer MPEG2.
2) enthusiast, someone who has some technical knowledge, has read some stuff, knows that when Irish DTT gets going they won't be able to use a certain type of technology. Couldn't tell you exactly what MPEG4 is but knows that you will need a decoder for it.
3) the vast majority of the population, most people don't pick up knowledge about this stuff from the ether and so don't know anything about it at all. These are the people that will unfortunately walk into some big retailer and see that the telly does MPEG<something> and reckon it's probbaly going to work for them. Once they can see that it does saorview it will help an awful lot.
[broken link removed] - for discussion of the branding. Bear in mind that this will be written mostly by expert/enthusiast level but it's the only place you're going to get anything approaching a clear explanation.
Regarding ariels - in general you can take it that if you get reasonable analog reception with a pair of rabbits ears (or whatever ariel you currently use) you will get reasonable digital reception with the same ariel. As long as you have a digital receiver of course . . . The transmission masts aren't changing 'direction' just because they've gone digital - the people who watch TV are still in the same areas so the masts still cover the same areas.
z