# What is the story with ITV/UTV?



## Brendan Burgess

The TV listings in the Irish Times has a heading UTV which has some programmes that I would watch e.g. on Monday, there is the Martin Lewis Money Show. 

But now I see something called be3 where UTV was. I gather that  UTV Ireland has stopped broadcasting. 

But is it possible to watch UTV or ITV via Virgin? 

Brendan


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## odyssey06

If there is, I haven't found a way... 
My OH is annoyed to miss out on James Martin's French adventure and Halcyon, and I miss the live football.

The station has been a disaster from start to finish. I knew UTV Ireland was doomed from their first schedule... this explains the frustrations of the staff:

http://www.thejournal.ie/utv-ireland-2-3173904-Jan2017/


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## Lightning

Brendan Burgess said:


> But is it possible to watch UTV or ITV via Virgin



Unfortunately, no. One can always watch the show online via the ITV Player by using a VPN.


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## newtothis

It's available on Freesat. I use a combination of Freesat and Saorview (and haven't paid for a TV service for several years now).


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## Gordon Gekko

Virgin just gets worse and worse.

No BT Sport and now no ITV.


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## mathepac

newtothis said:


> It's available on Freesat. I use a combination of Freesat and Saorview (and haven't paid for a TV service for several years now).


Ditto I use an old Sky box which gives me all the freetoview including ITV1/2/3/4


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## Lightning

Yeah, Freesat and Saorview is the option to go with for greater channel choice (including ITV1) and value that the Virgin TV packages.


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## Eithneangela

Ditto. I have 11 year old Sky boxes (got multi room with Sky in 2006 and cancelled after 18 months). They work fine with Freesat, can get all BBC, ITV, and many more channels absolutely free. When Irish channels went Saorview, I got local TV service engineer to install simple aerial in attic. Cost €100, and he connected both TV's and ensured that both the Sky boxes and aerial were working.  My TV's are quite old, at least 5 years, but still work fine.


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## theresa1

You can watch ITV 2,3 and 4 but no way you will ever see ITV1 (called UTV in Northern Ireland) on Virgin Media Ireland.

I hope the BBC or CH4 never consider launching a ROI version of it's channels. CH4 carry ROI advertising but that's as far as it goes.


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## meepman

No way you will see ITV1 on Virgin media as the takeover of TV3 meant they can show many hours of ITV programs on their 3 channels so having ITV1 on the virgin platform would not make any sense as they would lose many viewers.


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## theresa1

TV3 part off Virgin Media Ireland actually bought Utv Ireland from Itv and agreed a comprehensive agreement for Itv show's.


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## odyssey06

They need to get quicker at airing the ITV content they already have... there's lots of (free to them) publicity in the press when the shows air first on ITV1.
But TV3\UTV\Be3 delay airing it for no good reason - people will have forgotten about a new show by then. Tina & Bobby - I don't watch it but it got a lot of press for its ITV1 debut. Why not capitalise on that? The scheduling on the stations does not seem to be primarily driven with an eye to audience, but all kinds of backroom deals on content.


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## shweeney

Bit ridiculous the papers are still listing UTV as a main channel - it's actually one of the more difficult to pick up.  It's not listed on Sky, Virgin or Saorview which are the 3 main TV platforms in Ireland. 

You _can_ tune UTV in on a satellite receiver, including Sky+ but you can't record it on the latter. You can pick it up via aerial near the border or on the east coast (with a big, directional aerial) assuming your TV is compatible with the UK Freeview system.


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## T McGibney

shweeney said:


> Bit ridiculous the papers are still listing UTV as a main channel - it's actually one of the more difficult to pick up.  It's not listed on Sky, Virgin or Saorview which are the 3 main TV platforms in Ireland.



I don't know where you are based but UTV is probably the most popular terrestrial station in the Border and adjoining counties.


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## gipimann

You can use filmon.tv to watch the free to air channels, including ITV1.  It can be accessed via PC or App.


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## wednesday

Sky box - You can watch itv 1/2/3/4 etc on 'other channels' accessed by going to services, options and selecting from a list. You can find exactly how to add other channels to your list here.

I used to have awful trouble with channel 4 through the sky box and so watched instead the 'english' one on other channels.

Don't know if virgin have a similar thing too - sorry Brendan


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## dub_nerd

Like others on the thread I get this stuff free-to-air. I recently dumped Virgin Media as it didn't really give me any content I wanted that I couldn't get for free. I already had a satellite dish from a previous Sky installation and bought a simple indoor Saorview aerial for digital terrestrial. I initially used an old Sky box for satellite, but the user interface without a subscription isn't great -- you have to manually tune certain channels and access them differently to the rest. In any case I already had a couple of LG televisions which also had both satellite and terrestrial tuners. However, I didn't like the user interface to those either, so I finally settled on a Ferguson Ariva combo box (about €100) with satellite and terrestrial tuners and a decent user interface compared to the other options. It also supports live pause/replay and recording to an external hard disk.

The main limitations compared to a Sky or Virgin Media subscription is the more limited EPG ("now and next" on satellite and 7-day on Saorview), also you cannot record several channels simultaneously while watching another as with VM Horizon.  That doesn't bother me in the slightest as I am getting much more of my video content over the internet than before -- I kept the Virgin Media broadband. I could almost live without Saorview altogether as the only Irish content I watch is the odd news bulletin on RTE News Now. On the satellite side I have all the BBC and ITV channels, including BBC NI and UTV, BBC News in HD (which it isn't on Virgin Media -- in fact there are more HD channels on free-to-air than on VM). Also have Film 4 and various other movie channels, and lots of "plus one" channels (really missed Channel 4+1 for the news, which Sky had but VM did not). I trimmed the 500+ available satellite channels down to a couple of dozen that I would ever watch, and set them up across several "favourites" menus on the Ferguson box.

Will definitely never pay for subscription TV again.


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## roker

I got rid of Sky because they transmitted the Irish channel which I can get on Soarview, instead of ITV and BBC channels. They also prevent you using the recording feature if you stop subscribing
I bought a Freesat box, a Humax that has twin tuners and a hard drive the same as the Sky box, so I can get all of the BBC, ITV, channel 4 and many others
The earlier Sky boxes will pickup the English channels without the card but the later boxes will only pick up the Irish channels, once an Irish card has set it up it cannot be reset to UK


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## Kenbo

Hi all
What is the model number Humax best for use in Ireland and when to buy it please? Thanks Kenbo


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## roker

Humax HDR 1100S, 
It can also connect to you WiFi for Netflix, YouTube etc.


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## Kenbo

Thanks Roker Kenbo


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