The Oireachtas TV Irish parliamentary digital television service is available on the Government Campus LAN in Dublin and on the Government Networks in Ireland as the Oireachtas MPEG4 IPTV service, and provided in association with the Department of Finance.
The television service is available as IPTV MPEG4 at 1.2 MBit/sec per channel, which gives a very good quality 16:9 wide screen feed.
The SDI fed from the Broadcasting Unit is encoded as MPEG4 using a Skystream encoder. The following live feeds are available:
- Dáil (House),
- Seanad (Senate)
- CR1 (committee room 1)
- CR2 (committee room 2)
- CR3 (committee room 3)
- CR4 (committee room 4)
Government department and agencies may receive these channels free of charge once they are connected to the Government Campus LAN or to the Government Networks using a 10 MBit/sec or faster connection, provided by a carrier which is capable to carrying multicast traffic (all carriers connected so far are capable of this), and your own LAN must also be able to support multicast IP.
Multicast IP is used, so there is no impact on the bandwidth of government departments’ networks or Internet connections no matter how many users are watching the channels.
The Skystream appliance encoder that we use can handle eight channels, six are in use at present. The Office plans to supply the new parliamentary channel, and a multiscreen channel showing live feeds from the Dáil, Seanad and four committee rooms on one screen.
There is also a backup encoding system in place which can use input from the RF television distribution system.
Users can watch the television feeds using a standard television via a set top box and a SCART cable, or on a PC.
Several departments and offices are already connected to this service, and discussions are ongoing with several other departments, offices and agencies.
Any government department, office or agency interested in receiving Oireachtas IPTV channels should contact:
- Leo Bollins, eDemocracy Unit, Houses of the Oireachtas
or - Ken Barclay, Centre for Management, Organisation and Development, Department of Finance
