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Ireland's national broadcaster RTE didn't go air until new years day 1961.

The technical history of Irish TV is interesting though. A version of the European 625 line system, later to become PAL, was used from day one.

625 lines with a 6 mhz seperation between sound and vision broadcast on VHF

BBC adopted the same system for BBC 2 on UHF in 1964.

As a many Irish viewers in areas that could pick up UK broadcasts had invested heavily in 405 line televisions RTE decided that it would mirror its 625 line system in areas that could recieve BBC with a 405 line VHF service to cater for these viewers.

Dublin cable systems carried both versions as well as BBC on both 405 & 625 lines (both on VHF) after 1964ish.

RTE began broadcasting in PAL I (RTE Colour) from 1969 onwards on a phased basis. Films and some commercials were broadcast in colour first, followed by some studio produced programming. It wasn't fully colour until the mid 1970s.

UHF began to be phased in with the introduction of RTE 2 (now Network 2) but only where it was absolutely necessary as they didn't want to have a situation where people needed extra antennas.

In the early - mid 1990s TV3 and TG4 came on air on UHF only and RTE/Network 2 began to move more transmitters over to UHF. I think the general idea is to free up bandwidth on the old VHF frequencies for various digital services.

VHF is still very much alive, well and in use in many mountainous areas of the country where UHF tends to have difficulty reaching everyone.

djk,
Yeah, I know what you mean about VHF signals, with NZ being quite hilly, in some areas you can only get VHF signals and sometimes you need up to 3-4 single channel aerials to get the full set of channels.
A good case for Satellite TV, some places over here(like the West Coast of the South Island) are only just getting TV, with the launch of Digital Satellite signals, they haven't missed much, though!

TV reception's pretty easy here unless you're in some remote deep valley. RTE normally installed really small relays to deal with valleys and villages that missed the signal. Sky Digital has been a major boost for many really remote spots though as it brought good quality reception of RTE1, NET 2, TV3 and TG4 to some of the islands off the west coast for the first time as well as a load of other channels that were simply unavailable as MMDS (Digital microwave terestrial tv) is pretty much line of sight!

Generally people use those rectangular flat panel wideband antennas but there are plenty of huge old yagi VHF aerials around too.

Sky's dishes are a nice neat sollution or MMDS flat panel antennas if you're in an area covered by the network.

Paul,
One thing you don't really see these days, is the old Test Patterns!.
I remember when I was a wee fella, TV used to close down quite early and a little man used to come on the TV and wish us all Goodnight(It was 7:30!) and that he hoped that we had enjoyed the evening's veiwing.
And then the test pattern would come on, until 10 am the next morning.
(If there was a guy doing this, these days,
his e-mail address would be worth having)
But with 24 hour TV, we don't have a close- down man (or a closedown either!), just Infomercials selling all sorts of useless rubbish.
What has the world come to?!.

RTE used to close down with the national anthem and spectacular shots of the Irish countryside including weird stuff like dew drops on a cobweb caught in the sunset ... followed by either pages from Aertel (Teletext) with one of the RTE radio networks in the background or a test card and either radio or just a high pitch tone going from left speaker to right speaker all night.

during the 1970s when they were on a shoestring budget (partly thanks to having to spend vast chunks of their tight budget on hosting the Eurovision song contest) Ireland's TV service didn't start until mid-afternoon as the station couldn't pay for programming!! Pretty high price to pay for a very crappy show, always thought it's an unfair burden to place on small broadcasters.

They just re-run their normal daytime programming during the night thesedays and I doubt the Eurovision would represent such a struggle these days.

I remember BBC closing down with the British national anthem too.

I think Austrian TV played the national anthem and then went to snowstorm all night. I once saw a recording of the German ZDF shutting down, there was some guy like the news guy, saying in a very official tone: "Now the Second German TV closes it's program" or something like that and then went to snowstorm.

Ah... Test cards with their accompanying light music. Far more entertaining and certainly of much greater value than the trash that fills daytime TV these days.

Back when I was a kid in the 1970s, neither the BBC nor ITV (Independent Television) ran 24 hours a day. A typical day's schedule for BBC started with the transmitters fired up at around 8 a.m. and line-up signals from 8:30 onward. I can still recall normal BBC start-up routine: Pulse-&-bar at 8:30, gray-scale at 8:40, and 50Hz signal at 8:50.

At 9 a.m. we would get the test card with music until the start of either: (a) schools programs or (b) test matches during the cricket season. It was back to test card until noon or thereabouts for the news and current affairs stuff, and a short item for the young kiddies. Then back to test card until children's programs at around 3:30 to 4 p.m. (unless cricket was still going!). In later years they started putting more on in the afternoons, but mornings were still pretty much empty, except during school holidays and weekends when they had more on. I watched many re-runs of old Laurel & Hardy films and the made-for-cinema Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s, along with other children's fare such as The Adventures of Champion, Lassie, etc.

The evening programs generally finished by about midnight, unless something special was going on. Closedown here also had the announcer saying something along the lines of "From all of us here at the BBC, we hope you've enjoyed watching. The time is now five minutes to twelve and we are closing down. Goodnight." Then it was "God Save The Queen" (which for those unfamiliar with the British National Anthem, is the same tune as "My Country 'Tis Of Thee") with the accompanying film, showing shots of pageantry such as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace or something similar, ending on the Royal Flag. A few minutes later it would be blank raster and tone, and the transmitters would be switched off about a half hour later.

ITV followed a very similar pattern, although the day's start-up varied slightly as a different ITV company served each region. At about 9 a.m. the test signals would switch over to a "transmitters in service" caption, along with an announcement such as "This is Thames Television broadcasting through the transmitters of the Independent Broadcasting Authority." Many regions had a short 30 to 60-second opening film depicting scenes around the local area.

It was all so civililzed compared to today's presentation style. Back then, they let you see the show right to the end of the closing credits, and tere was often a couple of seconds black and silence before the continuity announcer came on. Now, they shrink the closing credits of one program to talkover it and advertise and it's all done as though there isn't a second to spare.

Here's the test card that most Brits recognize immediately, as it was used from 1967 right up until testcards vanished from the screens thanks to 24-hour programming:


Go here to see more old British test cards, tuning signals, etc.




[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 04-19-2003).]

The CBC in Canada shuts off from the end of programming after 1 or 2 AM, till 6 AM or so.
The terrestrial transmitters, after programming is discontinued, goes to a greeny grey-scal, then shut off, When they were fed with an analog satellite signal, you
could hear the DTMF codes used to control the transmitter.
If you receive CBC by satellite, you see the gren/grey bars all night.

I would guess that the Irish system of transmitters are controlled by some form of SCADA type system. I know RTE's transmission network as well as carrying 4 TV channels and 5 Radio networks on FM is also capable of linking studios and doing other 2-way communications. For example reports from corespondents can be fed back to their news centre through their network from studios all over the country. Radio and TV centres in Cork and Dublin etc can also be linked without resorting to satellite. Each transmitter site is linked by a microwave feed. I presume there's a transmitter control channel on the microwave network, I don't think the signals are carried in-band as DTMF tones.

RTE's digital terrestrial service which has yet to launch was tested with full two-way internet with a back channel carried over the transmission network. The set top boxes didn't need a phoneline they had full 2-way from the antenna on the roof.

It looks less and less likely that it will be commercially viable considering that we've already got a full digital terrestrial network on digital MMDS (Microwave around 2.49 Ghz ish) and any other terrestrial digital system would simply be duplicating this.

I did have a map showing the microwave links used by RTE in Ireland a few years ago, but I don't think I still have it.

As I recall, RTE also had a microwave link from somewhere in the northeast (Co. Louth, Co. Monaghan?) to their studio in Belfast. I assume that the RTE Belfast studio also had links to the BBC and Ulster ITV network as well.

I've lost track of who exactly controls what in Britain these days, but up until the early 1980s most TV distribution was by way of mixed microwave and coaxial systems leased to the BBC/ITV by the GPO.