RTE Testing Now

PacMan

Nice to see that Lyngsat, are listing all four Irish Television and Radio services on their list

www.lyngsat.com/dig/skyuk.shtml

SRB

Damo, they are still there - I'm listening to 2FM on my Non-Sky box as I type this and was reading Aertel a few mins ago. Sorry to say this but these tests could well continue, hidden from SkyDigiboxes, until they are ready to launch.
(BTW if they have changed the Test PIDs and don't change them back, even if you have the channels stored from earlier, you'll need to re-scan for the tests and re-store them with the new ones.)

DMC

Fair point, but they can only fully test the encryption on standard Sky Digiboxes. They have to test that.
(I know they are still there, but for the normal Sky digibox owner, they are not )

Nice one Pacman, just to include here, something that has been a long time in coming....


edit: Lyngsat have updated with the proper logos...except RnaG have updated their's since!!

chernobyl

I have tried on so many boxes and found nothing, nothing i tell ya!

Im not convinced they are there for the ismple reason that i cant see anything there.

I cant even get a signal from that transponder.

/maybe im still asleep?

Tony

Originally posted by chernobyl
I have tried on so many boxes and found nothing, nothing i tell ya!

Im not convinced they are there for the ismple reason that i cant see anything there.

I cant even get a signal from that transponder.

/maybe im still asleep?

Transponder is definitely active but encrypted and I suspect testing with non sky pid's today.

Regards Tony

chernobyl

Yeah i know they are using "non£ Sky pids for aud/video but there are only a select number that they usually use.

FTA box = nothing
Katherein 2CI = nothing.

/not my morning.

bkehoe

A friend can definatly get stuff with his Nokia box anyway; 8 different channels detected.

Brendan

Culchie Boy

Anybody know if rte will have an interactie service like sky news active or BBCi

Regards Culchie Boy.

obrien0107

I e-mailed them a few days ago about it but got no reply. I also
e-mailed tv3 and they said they won't have any at first.

jabarrett35

Hi tried the frequencies for RTE on SKY dig. but I'm just getting after a time "no signal" has anybody got any ideas?

icdg

Originally posted by Culchie Boy
Anybody know if rte will have an interactie service like sky news active or BBCi

RTE have set up a division to work on interactive services, RTE Interactive. But when I spoke to one of them many months ago, they told me were developing for DTT, not Sky/OpenTV. (Having said that at that time RTE had no intention of going on Sky, and at any rate I don't believe its decided with system the DTT service will use for its software?).

You might be waiting a while...

Incidently today's Tribune reported that Sky intend to start Sky Active Ireland later in the summer, nothing new there though.

Originally posted by jabarrett35
Hi tried the frequencies for RTE on SKY dig. but I'm just getting after a time "no signal" has anybody got any ideas?

Welcome! JABarrett35,
The reasons for this are already explained in the previous pages-keep trying and next week you should have them.
Most RTE engineers are probably only "on call" at the week end anyhow.
The tests by the way may still be there , it's just your digibox is being tricked by the engineers into not letting you have them as yet.
mm

rocket

Luckily, I was able to tune the stations in yesterday morning. The "Blank" label was for TV, and probally will be for TV3.


PACMAN this may be of interest to you and anybody else for that matter. When RTE began testing on Friday all the radio stations looked like TV stations i.e there was no ''audio'' symbol to suggest that these stations were either radio or tv, thats why i suggest the blank is lyric fm.
sky are probable trying to find some way of renaming TV3, ie TV3 Ireland, possibly to avoid confusion with TV3 Czech or something like that maybe thats why we havent seens its ids yet.

Well done RTE, viva la revolution!!!!!!!!:D

robert muldoon

Can't wait till Monday

DMC

Ah its only 3 hours and 27 mins away

Originally posted by rocket
Luckily, I was able to tune the stations in yesterday morning. The "Blank" label was for TV, and probally will be for TV3.


PACMAN this may be of interest to you and anybody else for that matter. When RTE began testing on Friday all the radio stations looked like TV stations i.e there was no ''audio'' symbol to suggest that these stations were either radio or tv, thats why i suggest the blank is lyric fm.
sky are probable trying to find some way of renaming TV3, ie TV3 Ireland, possibly to avoid confusion with TV3 Czech or something like that maybe thats why we havent seens its ids yet.

Well done RTE, viva la revolution!!!!!!!!:D

rocket-when I tuned in the test channels on Friday morning after Corm informed us they were there-My Sky digibox showed FM2 (and the other radio stations) or 2fm as it should be as a radio station and not as a tv station as you suggest

The blank channel is also,when selected appearing in the same way as a TV channel does and not as a radio channel and therefore is most likely TV3 and not Lyric FM.This would have been the case on all digiboxes.

As I said on page one of this thread the mis- spellings suggest to me that the names were inputted by Sky and not RTE or TV3 and the guys doing that weren't obviously o-fay yet with what to type in!
Yeap they probably will name the channel TV3 Ireland.
TV3 Czech is not on the Epg and therefore theres no problem calling Irelands TV3 as just TV3 on the Irish EPG.

TinMan

I agree with you Madman, when I tuned in the Channels on Friday afternoon and looked at fm2 it showed up as the same way as the radio channels...

Its gone now though, but hopefully we will be able to see something tomorrow. I will be rushing home from work just to catch it.

Chong

Wats up everybody im just writing to ask and question damo dmc about rte, all i'd like to know is if i put in the rte frequency in at midnight tonight will rte be made available immediatly at that time or wot.

Originally posted by big willy
Wats up everybody im just writing to ask and question damo dmc about rte, all i'd like to know is if i put in the rte frequency in at midnight tonight will rte be made available immediatly at that time or wot.

The engineers might be on call,But if Big Willy rings them to come in at midnight to switch on , they'll be pretty pi**ed with you:D
mm

Charles Slane

Hi Big Willy,

I wouldn't imagine that the tests will appear at midnight.

RTE originally said that tests would start this Tuesday, so I'd imagine that the current tests may be not actually being conducted by RTE as such, but rather by Sky and their uplink techies etc.

We may see labels appearing again tomorrow, but as RTE (and Tom in particular) have so far been very forthcoming with info, the actual RTE tests may not appear 'til Tuesday.

Time will tell. I'm still quite excited about it despite the ticking off I got from "thegeek" (Oh I'm sorry, I meant "thegreek" ) ....

Originally posted by thegreek
.... for gods sake Charles (Slane) pints with lads are always more important than RTE test signals....

....as if I didn't already know this. Although I thought it was a little bit presumptious, considering I never mentioned anything about "lads" in my original message

Anyway, I'm sure we'll all soon be bored senseless by having RTE, TV3 etc on our EPGs, but in the meantime, have fun searching for the tests and first broadcasts, and don't let anyone try to stop you enjoying it.

P.S. And keeping posting the latest news !!

DMC

ah I was only messing with Robert Muldoon that Monday is only a few wee short hours away

Anytime after 10:15am AEST*

Damien.

*Not Australian time, but Aggravated Engineer Standard Time. Typically, Engineers come to work at 8:30am, chat around, check mail, browse boards.ie, by 10am its tea-time, only at 10:15am will they start doing some work!

carrolls

Hi Lads again,
How many channels are going to be on our RTE transducer?
The reason why I ask is the more channels using up bandwidth on the transducer, the more likely digital artefacts and blocking will occur on RTE.
The ITV channels, when they were testing, all suffered seriously from digital artefacts, especially when a lot of movement occured in a scene. It also happened more on the networked shows and movies. I suppose if all the channels on the same transducer were carrying the same show, and there was a lot of movement in a scene, all the digital bandwidth would be used up rather quickly.
Are we sharing with a network of ITV channels?
I wonder if RTE engineers are aware of these issues.

Giblet

I don't think we'd have to worry about it. Five channels isn't a heck of a lot. And Artifacting can also be caused by Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) being used on tv's. Which is available on most tv's in the past few years.
It should be turned off now you have digital.

bkehoe

Isn't it a transponder? As Lyngsat shows, RTE have their own transponder, which was agreed with Sky I beleive (I think Sky are leasing the transponder and letting RTE use it, unlike ITV who are leasing their own transponders).

Never had any problems with ITV from when it started testing to the present, though some say that the soccer/football stuff looks bad (not a fan myself).

Brendan

dmeehan

everytime i try to tune in the rte's, i get nothing (as expected after reading all this thread). but when i go back to sky i get a searching for listings mesg evertime.

anyone else see this??

carrolls

I get that too.
I would assume that the channel memory buffer is cleared every time that you try to add new channels, the processors resources are put into overdrive, and all the ram is used up.

The Channel memory database is actually very large and takes a long time to refill once empty.
The EPG has a High priority interrupt in the software and the Other channels option has a low priority Interrupt. (This is Sky's Style)
There is probably a bug in the software that causes the software not to switch back to High Priority Interrupt when you go back to the EPG menu.

dmeehan

well so long as its not just me

ta

SRB

Fair point, but they can only fully test the encryption on standard Sky Digiboxes. They have to test that.
(I know they are still there, but for the normal Sky digibox owner, they are not )
==============================================
Not strictly true - a box used for testing could well be a standard digibox but with more software options available to it. At the end of the day a Sky digibox is more or less the same as a non Skydigibox it's mainly just the Sky Software that is different, IE limited symbol rates, no manual audio, video PID entry etc...
Really they could wait until launch day before anything appears...

DMC

But the history of channel launches on Sky Digital tells us that they dont do this. They gotta find out of the public can see the tests too

Patience, lads..... Good things come to those who.......

PacMan

Originally posted by dmeehan
but when i go back to sky i get a searching for listings mesg evertime.anyone else see this??

I get that also. I assumed that it was my Digibox, as I had not seen it reported here previously.
It has happened only when I go to the Network 2 ID Bar.
Just tried the tests again, and nothing doing so far.... We will all have to wait until tomorrow (Tues)

SRB

Could be a cost factor - they maybe don't want to have to pay for the CA set up to be up and running simply for tests and as they are being watched by CH4 and 5, they probably don't want to risk anything going out that shouldn't, it's probably cheaper to run encrypted tests that only RTE can see !

jez

Lads,I have attached info as per What Satellite web site. They seem to think we're all watching RTE merrily!!Monday April 8


New Irish channels launch on Sky
A string of new Irish channels has launched on Sky Digital. RTE One, RTE Network 2, TV3, TG4 and four radio stations have all begun test broadcasts at 10.744GHz/H (SR 22000, FEC 5/6). The channels have been available at times using the Add Channels facility in the System Setup onscreen menu, although some readers have reported difficulties in viewing them. The launches come just days after Irish channel Tara was removed from the Sky Digital lineup after closing down - as reported by Wotsat.com last week. [April 7]

byte

I hope that the tests will be visable tomorrow so that I can watch the Champions League on TV3 in digital quality!!

Phelim 3:16

Yeah me too Irishbyte! I was delighted last week that Liverpool-Leverkusen would be my last match watched on a dodgy picture. Come on TV3 don`t dissappoint me (again)!! Does digital "quality" mean that TV3 will have to sack Frank Stapleton and all their presenters? Surely SKY won`t want them hogging channel space? Or is that just wishful thinking! Ah well at least the picture quality will be good!!:D

Phelim

TinMan

Yes that would be nice, TV3 in Digital for the United match on wednesday, that would be heaven but I can't see it happening. I recon they have encryped the tests and it will be about the 22nd of April before we will see anything.

Please prove me wrong!

irishgeo

i hope RTE leave the tests on next weekend so i can watch the F1 on sunday. F1 digital + is good but costly.

wolfman

Have to agree with you there. Tried the F1+ digital myself last week. Excellent but costly.

In the meantime, I still can't find any of the RTE channels on my box either!

wolfman

And even though it is NOW technically the 9th April, I am still not having any luck!

dmeehan

if anyone is still at home, can they check it out after 9am (or maybe 10:15, to give the engineers a chance to wam up)

i doubt it would suddenly come on at 12:03

TinMan

Yes good idea, and let us know if that Blank bar last friday is Lyric FM or TV3...:D

Tony

Transponder is on as of 09.55 but still encrypted and unavailable on digibox.

Regards Tony

Phelim 3:16

I`m at home and just checked. Still says "No Signal"! Hopefully the engineers are just pissing about doing something and we will have something later. I`ll check again when I get home around 3.

Phelim

dmeehan

i wont be home till 6, so hopefully someone will have found something before then

BigCon

Can't wait to hear George Hamilton tomorrow night on digital, commentating the Man Utd Deportivo game. Fingers crossed!;)

DMC

erm, you wont hear George!

He works for the competition...

Guys, I dont want you to be too dissapointed if the tests dont cover the footie. I would be 90% certain that there will be no testing done at that hour.

BigCon

Yeah, I forgot that. Is there any particular reason why they wouldn't leave the tests running 24/7? Surely a test should be tested for a long period of time, day and night? Or is it a case of 'if it works at all, it'll work all the time'?

SRB

I really hope I'm wrong, (if only to stop this thread going on for ever !) but as the tests are on going 24/7 and carrying RTE1, Net 2 and TV3 plus the radio channels, (a domestic Sky box just won't let you see them) there really is no need for them to appear to all before the launch date. The theory that tests have always appeared before isn't really vaild as we haven't been dealing with RTE before. Technically as long as everything is OK, then a domestic SKY BOX will be ready to go, domestic tests carried out on them or not.

Well the ITV tests did go on fairly late and we all saw them....don't know about the RTE engineers though:D

Also , with the ITV tests, there were some tests that digiboxes couldn't see and then there was a long period when they could see them as tests had to be carried out on conditional access and widescreen switching via digiboxes etc.
This will have to happen too with the Irish tests, so I think it's unlikely that they will be blocked untill the 23rd from digiboxes.
Unless of course theres another legal hitch BCI style.
mm

Phelim 3:16

Quick Update for those at work. As of ten minutes ago, still nothing. Doesn`t look good lads!

Phelim

TinMan

And as this Thread reaches 100 in record time there will be no Digital Champions League matches watched 2nite:(