Image: Marc O’Sullivan Photography
Eir is making an ambitious play for dominance in yet another digital market. This time, it’s the world of television.
The newly announced Eir TV service has become the first in the world to use the Apple TV 4K device as its sole set-top box. The Irish telecoms provider yesterday (17 October) debuted its new streaming service, the latest addition to an increasingly crowded market. So what do we know about the service?
According to the Irish telecoms giant, Eir TV customers will have access to more than 100 channels as well as popular on-demand and playback apps such as RTÉ Player, Now TV, Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. The new service will also have sports offerings – namely, Eir Sports 1, Eir Sports 2 and Virgin Sport.
Due to the fact that the service works through an Apple TV device, customers will also have access to iTunes films and TV shows, Apple TV channels, Apple TV+, Apple Music and a variety of other apps.
Other service features include seven-day catch-up, the ability to pause, rewind and start over select shows, and cloud storage of up to 500 programmes.
TV terms
The TV package on its own will cost €14.99 per month for the first six months and then €19.99 per month thereafter.
Customers who want to combine the TV with Eir’s fibre broadband and home phone will pay an initial six-month offering of €49.99 per month, increasing to €79.99 per month every month thereafter. Multi-room can be added for an additional €10. Eir has said that customers can watch up to five concurrent streams, including on smartphones.
One caveat: the service requires a minimum broadband speed of 12Mbps, which would exclude many Irish users.
The company also launched a new ‘fibre box’, which the company claims will enable speeds of up to one gigabit.
The announcement was made only a few days after Eir made a splash with the launch of a new entirely digital mobile brand, complete with a €9.99 “unlimited” offer for the first 100,000 customers to sign up.
