Saorsat
Company type | Free-to-air satellite television promotions company |
---|---|
Founded | 2nd Quarter, 2011 |
Area served | Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (via overspill) |
Saorsat (English: Freesat) is the proposed name for the free to air Satellite service in the Republic of Ireland. The Service will launch in the 2nd quarter of 2011.
Overview
The ATT system has never been capable of providing 100% population coverage in Ireland. Currently ATT population coverage amounts to some 98% for RTÉ One and RTÉ Two, 95% for TG4 and 85% for TV3. DTT faces a similar difficulty.
The Board of RTÉ has recently approved a unique satellite based approach developed by RTÉ NL that will for the first time enable Irish PSB channels to be made available Free-To-Air and unencrypted as a solution for the coverage of that last 2% to 10%.
Saorsat is very likely to use Kasat @ 9E (launch November 2010 to February 2011) as it's the only likely Ka Band Satellite and the only satellite in Mid 2011 time frame with narrow Ireland only spot (due to frequency re-use on 80+ spots) and thus avoids cost of encryption and also the legislation that would be needed for a FTV card scheme.
These resources are based on RTE submission to Oireachtas Communication Committee and Press releases of Minister Ryan and RTE. See links for detail sources. Lyngsat list of Ka Band Sat launches Collected comments and posts Soarsat Preliminary Information
At least a DVB-S2 HD MPEG receiver, Ka Band LNBF and dish will be needed to receive Soarsat. Reception using LNB, Dish and coax for Sky/Freesat isn't possible without extra equipment. The Spot beam with Frequency reuse means reception in Mainland UK is impossible thus making it practicable as otherwise the Encryption & Card scheme costs or extra costs for "rights" (even on home produced content) would be prohibitive.
The content will be a copy of Saorview content and will be able to be used as a back-up feed for DTT sites.
The main purpose of Kasat is as a platform for the low cost Tooway Internet service. It should be possible to feed an DVB-S2 HD setbox for Saorsat by splitting the receive coax of a Tooway VSAT.
Saor is the Irish word for free.
Channels
The Service will have the same channels as the RTÉ Saorview service, as listed below.
Current Analogue Channels
Current Digital Channels
Government Proposed Channels
Additional Channels from RTÉ
- RTÉ One +1 - timeshares with The Den and EuroNews
- The Den - timeshares with RTÉ 1 +1 and EuroNews
Possible Commerical Channels
Proposed radio stations
RTÉ
- RTÉ Radio One
- RTÉ Radio One Extra
- RTÉ 2FM
- RTÉ Lyric FM
- RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta
- RTÉ Choice
- RTÉ Gold
- RTÉ Junior/RTÉ Chill
- RTÉ 2XM
- RTÉ Pulse
Communicorp
See also
- Television in Ireland
- RTÉ NL
- Saorview
- [3]Hobbyist boards information on Saorsat
References
- ^ HANCOCK, CIARÁN (15 July 2010). "Free-to-air digital TV could cost RTÉ €70m". Irish Times. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
- ^ HANCOCK, CIARÁN (15 July 2010). "Free-to-air digital TV could cost RTÉ €70m". Irish Times. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
- ^ http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055968485&page=33