We decided to make the switchover to digital TV, a year ahead of the deadline. Not, let’s be honest, for the many wonders this new technology brings. Nor for the early-adopter cool. No, it was mainly because of stuff in the attic.
You see up until now broadcast TV in Ireland has been on both UHF and VHF.
No? My God, do I have to draw diagrams? That means you need two aerials¹. And because our attic is small these are too close together, bouncing signals off each other. So any time you move one it buggers up reception on the other. In short, trying to get a good picture on all channels was about as much fun as being repeatedly stabbed.
So after we moved the aerials to get the attic insulated, I decided it wasn’t worth going through all that again, and that we should skip straight to the new technology. It’s not expensive. You may have heard you need a new ‘digital’ aerial. In fact you just need a UHF one, so if you’re already getting TV3 or TG4 you’ve probably OK. A very nice bonus is that the all-or-nothing nature of digital makes it a hell of a lot less sensitive about position. Even though ours is so off-beam it renders analogue channels in snowy monochrome, we still get a crisp digital picture.
Nor do you need a new TV, you can buy a digital tuner to connect to your existing set for less than €100. And if you rent one, then it’s the rental company’s problem. Ours was more than happy to swap our 21″ analogue CRT for a fairly nifty 26″ flatscreen at the same rent. (It has so many inputs!!!)
In short then, approximate cost and hassle of switching to digital = Sweet FA.
So should you rush to join me on Saorview?² Yes if you have a bad picture, in which case the switch could make an amazing difference. Otherwise, nah. For one, it’s not guaranteed to work yet. You may find it ups and disappears on you randomly. (Though if it does, you should still be able to tune in the old analogue signal.) While HD is nice and all it’s not exactly a viewing revolution, and only Network 2 is being broadcast in HD yet. There’s 3e if you’re not getting that already, which justifies its existence by showing Futurama, and RTÉ’s new digital channels, which no one remembers asking for. And that’s about it – so far anyway.
Except that this may be your first brush with owning a widescreen TV – or at least, one with a widescreen signal to match. I’d like to say this makes sense of the whole thing, but it’s still a mess. You were used to films being letterboxed on your old 4:3 TV. Now you have to choose between programmes being cropped, stretched, or pillarboxed. And you must choose, because not everything looks best the same way. And you must not choose stretched. Goddamit people are fat enough these days.
Any other cons? Well on this set at least there’s a very noticeable delay when you change channel. Maybe you get used to that. And you’ll need a new Saorview-compatible DVD player to record from the digital signal, so factor that in when calculating… well, calculating the expense the government is putting you to for as yet no very clear reason.
- You may prefer to call them antennas.
- We call it Saorview, from the Irish Saor, meaning ‘Free’, and the English View, meaning ‘Radharc’.
Related articles
- 65-year-old TV still works after digital switchover (newslite.tv)
- beehive.govt.nz – Hawke’s Bay and West Coast countdown for digital TV switch (pretzelsandkarma.wordpress.com)
7 replies on “Doing The Digital Switchover”
One of the cooler things that not many people know about digital TV is that all the presenters on the digital TV are actually robots made to look exactly like their analog counterparts.
Wait, in Ireland TVs are a standard part of the rent?
What devilish magic is this?
The TV, not the house. I’ve changed the wording to clarify.
It never occurred to me that it could be understood another way. Does nobody rent a TV in the States anymore? Always thought my mother was wasting money that way, but maybe it’s not such a bad idea while standards are changing this fast.
Our standards didn’t change for over 50 years, they changed last decade, and they probably won’t change for another 20 at least.
And yeah, tv rental basically doesn’t exist here. What you have are “rent-to-own” companies, which basically exploited poor people by giving them $500 tvs and saying “we’ll only charge you $25 a month for 5 years”, trusting they wouldn’t do the math on that. Those companies mostly died the deaths they so richly deserved, though I’d imagine there’s a few still kicking.
Wait, in Ireland TVs are a standard part of the rent?
What devilish magic is this?
The TV, not the house. I’ve changed the wording to clarify.
It never occurred to me that it could be understood another way. Does nobody rent a TV in the States anymore? Always thought my mother was wasting money that way, but maybe it’s not such a bad idea while standards are changing this fast.
Our standards didn’t change for over 50 years, they changed last decade, and they probably won’t change for another 20 at least.
And yeah, tv rental basically doesn’t exist here. What you have are “rent-to-own” companies, which basically exploited poor people by giving them $500 tvs and saying “we’ll only charge you $25 a month for 5 years”, trusting they wouldn’t do the math on that. Those companies mostly died the deaths they so richly deserved, though I’d imagine there’s a few still kicking.