Digital TV providers switch-on to guides

A BOOKLET with the title “Your simple guide to the switchover” (strapline: “making the switch to digital TV easy”) begins by noting that this is “an exciting year” for television: “Ireland is switching completely to digital TV. So if you watch TV through an aerial and want to keep watching all your favourite TV channels after this date, you’ll need to switch to the national digital terrestrial television service, Saorview or join a digital TV provider like Sky.”

Ah ha – RTÉ might be obliged to run a public information campaign for its free-to-air digital terrestrial television service, but there’s nothing to stop the marketing departments of digital pay-television providers from producing their own “consumer guides” to analogue switch-off.

An exciting time for Sky Ireland, then, which is still, by some distance, the dominant digital television provider in the Republic – despite having neither the charms of Ryan Tubridy (Saorview) or Craig Doyle (UPC) on board.

Some of the charms it does possess are those of Sky Go, which allows customers to watch certain channels on their smartphones, tablets and laptops – a nifty function, clearly, though perhaps not everyone will agree with Sky Ireland sales and marketing director Mark Anderson’s claim that the facility means “those arguments over the remote control should become a thing of the past”.