We’ve been charting the progress of the switch-over from analogue to digital broadcasting for about as long as our TechCentral podcast has been running – roughly four years. While digital radio has been slowly gaining momentum we now have the prospect of digital terrestrial television (DTT) taking over as the national broadcaster vacates the analogue spectrum at the end from 2012. Having solidified what the initial channel offering will be, RTE has begun its national marketing campaign – complete with computer-generated animals – to get the population on board with the changeover.
Thanks to an EU directive, DTT will replace analogue broadcasting by the end of next year. From then on conventional aerial tuners will require an additional decoder to receive broadcast signals. Most new televisions already come with the required MPEG4 tuner as standard, while older sets will require an additional decoder box, available for around €100. Subscribers to digitial TV services will likely not notice anything at all.
By law RTE is obliged to provide the infrastructure for DTT, and it promises to have 98% coverage by October next year. As for what you can watch on it the options are better than ‘rabbit ears’, but still short of the kind of deals negotiated with private partners who fell away as the advertising market imploded. For the moment the selection for free-to-air DTT is RTE 1, RTE 2, RTE News Now, TG4, TV3 and 3e. Accordng to the Saorview website we can expect a +1 service for RTE 1, a HD iteration of RTE 2, a children’s channel RTE Junior, and an Aertel Digital service. DTT will also carry RTE’s existing DAB channels as well. Talk of a dedicated channel for Irish Film, for the moment, appears to be just that.
Still, there is there enough by way of content to encourage viewers to make the switch-over before it is imposed on them? RTE News Now was essential viewing during the general election, and its webcam footage of the RTE Radio 1 studio balances the informative with the comic (it’s not all stoney faces in there).
It’s arguable the biggest challenge to DTT will not come from cable providers as such, but from Internet connected TVs. You might find a lot of sets without tuners will be turned into monitors overnight, stuffed with a diet of catch-up services like RTE Player, 4od and, IP blockers permitting, Hulu. ISPs like Magnet are trying their own WebTV offering that could see users comfortably bypass the license fee without missing a thing. If either of these models take hold RTE could find itself losing customers to the Web and digital services like the aforementioned Sky and it’s ilk.
The EU might be forcing the analogue switch-off on us, now it’s up to RTE alone to keep its audience. Let’s see if the cute and cuddly animation works.
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