RTE2 Now Broadcasting in HD on Ireland's DTT Service

There was a total surprise to digital TV viewers in Ireland in the last few days. All of a sudden, RTE 2 disappeared from their digital terrestrial television receivers. What happened? Did they turn it off? Did the TV channel go back into test mode as TV3 had been for moths before? No, RTE in an unannounced move, turned off the standard definition signal for RTE 2 and began broadcasting it in high definition. This on the face of it would seem to be a good move technologically speaking and there is no doubt that as I say technologically speaking, this is a good thing but what RTE have not considered is the multitude of people in Ireland who have bought standard definition DTT receivers and now find that they are missing RTE2 with no possibility of receiving the channel.

The problem is that the HD TV signal they are broadcasting is not capable for want of a better phrase of being 'downscaled' to work on a Standard Definition digital TV receiver. It will only work on a high definition DTT receiver which can accept the standard definition signal currently being broadcast for the rest of the Irish DTT TV channels.

Currently as it stands on the 4th of December 2010, if you have a standard definition digital TV receiver, you can receive the following channels

* RTE1 - Yes
* RTE2 - No
* TV3 - Yes
* TG4 - Yes
* RTE News Now - Yes
* E3 - Yes

I suppose it's not the end of the world initially but in the long term, the rest of the channels will be going high def and this list will grow smaller. There is no timeframe for this switchover, so it is really in the lap of the gods or RTE to be more precise.

The only way to future proof you DTT viewing is to invest in a HD DTT receiver. This way you can rest assured that any further move to HD by RTE and the other TV channel providers will not affect you.

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