In Ireland today as I write this article there are, despite public opinion, only 3 types of Satellite TV. There is Free to air, Freesat and Subscription (Like Sky etc). I will deal with Sky first.
 
Sky TV is the most common form of Satellite TV in Ireland. To receive it you will need some form of an official Sky receiver and a card. Sky have the widest range of channels on their platform and by far the most in high definition at the moment. You can also add in sky movies and sky sports too. Unfortunately you have to pay for all this and a full sky package can cost up to 80 to 90 euro a month. Not to everyone's linking but as I say the quantity and quality of channels is hard to beat.
 
If you want to go down the Free Satellite TV route, then you have two options currently. You can either get a free to air receiver or a Freesat receiver. Both can receiver all the free UK TV Satellite channels but there are differences between them both in technicalities and pricing.
 
A free to air satellite receiver is by far the cheaper of the two. You can pick up a basic model for something in the region of 50 to 60 euro these days. It will enable you receive all the free to air channels from the UK or any other country as long as you have the satellite dish pointed at the correct satellite. Sounds great but there are a couple of small drawbacks. The EPG on a free to air box is not great. It really only by default gives you now and next. This isn't the end of the world but if the satellite receiver is PVR ready and you have connected an external storage device to it, then you can't simply peruse the EPG and press record unless what you want to record is either on now or next. You have have to manually set a timer for it in the PVR settings. Again it's not the end of the world but technology is meant to be making our lives simpler not regressing us back to the days of the old VCR. The other issue is that if a television company changes their frequency, then the box does not automatically update itself and you have to manually change the transponder frequency itself. This does not happen often luckily but a few months ago BBC changed some of their frequencies and it did cause much confusion.
 
The Freesat satellite receivers are really the top end of the market. Again, they can receive all the free UK satellite channels but there are significant differences between it and free to air boxes. Freesat receivers are in general more expensive that their free to air counterparts but there is a good reason for this. The top end Freesat boxes can cost 300 to 400 euro but as before it is a one off payment and there are no bills after that. 400 euro sounds like a lot, so what do you get for the extra money.
 
Well, for a start the EPG is extraordinary. It is the only EPG on a satellite receiver that is comparable if not better in some regards to a sky box. It had a full 8 day EPG, not just now and next. Ahead of it's Sky counterpart, it has extra channels automatically tuned in(like ITV 2,3 & 4) which enables you to record them unlike on a sky box (found under other channels). Most of the freesat boxes have hard drives built in which pushes up the price. Freesat receivers automatically update themselves when frequencies change so there is no fiddling around with the settings for the user.