List of Irish television channels

Encyclopedia : L : LI : LIS : List of Irish television channels

Ireland's television channels are a subset of the Media in Ireland.

Contents

1 Republic of Ireland Terrestrial Channels
2 Channels available from the United Kingdom

2.1 Northern Irish Terrestrial Channels
2.2 Welsh Terrestrial Channels

3 Cable/Satellite Channels
4 Future Channels
5 Defunct Channels
6 Other Channels
7 Technical Information
8 Digital terrestrial television (DTT)
9 See also

9.1 External links

Republic of Ireland Terrestrial Channels

These channels are available as free-to-air analogue broadcasts, as well as on satellite and cable systems. Approximately 21.5% of homes receive only these channels. 78% of homes receive additional channels.

Radio Telefís Éireann - the independent state broadcasting company

RTÉ One - main RTÉ national station (broadcast from both Cork and Dublin).
RTÉ Two - secondary RTÉ national station (known for a long period as "Network 2")
TG4 - National Irish Language station

Independent terrestrial station

TV3 Ireland - independent commercial broadcaster

Channels available from the United Kingdom

Northern Irish Terrestrial Channels

The five main UK terrestrial channels are also broadcast to most parts of the Republic via various means. The Northern Irish variants are most widely available. The UK Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) system, Freeview, can be received in border areas of the Republic. The main analogue channels are:

BBC ONE Northern Ireland
BBC TWO Northern Ireland (or BBC TWO NI via DTT )
UTV (ITV)
Channel 4
five

In addition, a number of local television stations operate in Northern Ireland

Channel 9 operates in Derry and broadcasts to some or all of Counties Derry/Londonderry, Antrim, Tyrone and, in the Republic, County Donegal.
NvTv operates in Belfast

Welsh Terrestrial Channels

In some areas of the Republic of Ireland (mainly the South East), Welsh channels are available off-air, via both analogue and digital terrestrial.

BBC ONE Wales
BBC TWO Wales
ITV1 Wales
S4C (The Welsh Fourth Channel)
five

Some cable, MMDS and deflector systems towards this part of the country carry these channels as opposed to the Northern Irish variants, although this is generally changing with the consolidation of cable networks.

Cable/Satellite Channels

A number of Irish channels operate solely on cable (or MMDS systems operated by cable firms), or on cable and Sky Digital

Province5 broadcast only to the town of Navan on Chorus Cable, but is the oldest cable-only broadcaster in Ireland.
Setanta is an Irish broadcaster that has expanded its North American and Australian pay-per-view private satellite feeds into a series of channels for the UK and Ireland region. Setanta Ireland is on the former NTL cable systems as well as being on Sky Digital. Subscription channels Setanta Sports 1 and Setanta Sports 2 are also carried on the Sky platform.
Chorus Sports is on Chorus Cable, which shows local sports, greyhound racing, and national rallies. The channel has been re-licenced as Chorus TV and will be moving to a general audience.
Sky News Ireland is a 1 hour daily Irish opt-out on Sky News, carried to Ireland on Sky Digital, and by most cable companies. Also available in the UK on Sky News Active
City Channel commenced in October 2005 providing local television output for Dublin. It currently only available on NTL digital in Dublin, Galway and Waterford.
The Wrestling Channel (TWC), while UK owned, is produced and played out from Howth in County Dublin.
Channel 6, a cable-only general entertainment channel.

Future Channels

Bubble Hits, an Ofcom licensed but Athlone based music channel, who intend to launch free-to-air on satellite in August 2006
Dublin Community Television, a BCI licensed digital cable channel to serve Dublin city and county.
Chorus TV (see above)
City Channels for both Galway and Waterford.

Defunct Channels

Channel 3 (Later known as Channel D) was a short-lived television station broadcasting from July 1981 to October 1981. It was a pirate TV channel.
Capital Television was another short-lived channel which only broadcast a caption for a week, along with a testcard at night another week. It, too, was a pirate TV channel.
Nova TV was another pirate TV channel that was broadcast for a short time in the 1980s.
Telefis na Gaeltacht, unconnected to the later TnaG, was a pirate Irish language service in the west of Ireland.
Tara TV was an Irish channel that was broadcast in the UK on Sky Digital from 1997 until RTÉ forced its closure in 2002. It was also broadcast in the Republic of Ireland for much of this time.
A large amount of cable systems prior to the mergers of the 1990's broadcast "local information" channels which rarely consisted of more than local advertisements, text news, bus timetables and similar, although local-level sport, particularly gaelic games, were also common.
Some deflector systems run or have run their own services (illegally), generally similar to those run (legally) by the cable operators. Also, some 'relay' services for which terrestrial overspill reception is physically impossible, such as EWTN.

Other Channels

With most Irish homes (figures have indicated 90%+) having Sky Digital or a multichannel cable or MMDS system, a huge number of other channels are available to most people. The majority of stations on the List of British television channels are available to some or all homes.

Many of these channels acknowledge their Irish audience, ranging from providing Irish telephone or SMS numbers (e.g TMF, QVC), to providing a specific Irish advertising stream (Sky One, E4, Paramount Comedy Channel).

There are also foreign channels available in Ireland, which are broadcast from around the world including China, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, India, Pakistan and the U.S.A..

Technical Information

Analogue television in both parts of Ireland uses System I with 625 lines and the PAL colour standard, with NICAM digital stereo sound where applicable. In the Republic both VHF and UHF are used but in Northern Ireland, in common with the rest of the UK, VHF is no longer used for analogue TV. VHF for TV transmission is slowly being phased out in Ireland - only RTÉ One and RTÉ Two are on VHF band III in some areas, and the more recently established stations (TV3 and TG4) have been only broadcast on UHF.

Digital terrestrial television (DTT)

There is no digital terrestrial television in the Republic of Ireland as yet, although RTÉ and the Department of Communications, Marine & Natural Resources have announced the deployment of DVB-T trials. UK DTT aka Freeview can be received in parts of Wicklow, Wexford, Westmeath, Roscommon, Sligo as well as those counties bordering Northern Ireland.