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Saorview

Saorview (/ˈsɛərvj/ SAIR-vyoo) is the national digital terrestrial television (DTT) service in Ireland. It is owned by RTÉ and operated by 2RN.

The service began operation on 29 October 2010 on a trial basis with a full launch on 26 May 2011. By legislation it was required to be available to approximately 90% of the population by end of October 2010 in a public testing capacity and nationwide by December 2011. The national public launch was preceded by a public information campaign, which began on 15 March 2011, with television and radio advertising beginning on 17 March 2011.

Saorview was officially launched on 26 May 2011 by Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte and the service became the primary source of broadcast television in Ireland following the ending of analogue transmissions on 24 October 2012.

Saorview is Ireland's national DTT service. The Irish word saor [sˠiːɾˠ] means "free"; thus it is a partial calque of Freeview, the name of the DTT service of the United Kingdom.

Saorview is available from 64 DTT transmitters covering 98% of the population as of the end of Q3 2012. The previous analogue terrestrial television (ATT) network was available to 98% of the population from 150 ATT transmitters, however TV3 and TG4 were not available on all transmitters.

The service is a DVB-T/MPEG-4 HD broadcast that is received via set-top box (STB) receiver or iDTV and a UHF aerial is required. MHEG-5 is the middleware standard for digital teletext. Programme information is displayed through the receiver's own inbuilt EPG. Either DVB or Teletext subtitling can be displayed when broadcast.

Mary Curtis became Director of Digital Switchover (DSO) in September 2010 and reported to the Director General. She oversaw the transition from Analogue to Digital TV broadcast, which was completed in October 2012.

The service was launched in 2011 with the ASO campaign phase beginning Dec 2011. Two campaigns were launched. The first campaign was marketing Saorview and was paid for by RTÉ, this cost RTÉ over €3million, meanwhile, a second campaign featuring Gay Byrne was also launched by the Department of Communications, it also cost in the region of €3million. Both campaigns used social media such as Facebook and Twitter alongside their own websites www.goingdigital.ie (now defunct) and saorview.ie.

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