Saorview aerials: rooftop, attic or indoor

For Saorview you need an ordinary wideband UHF aerial, ideally on the roof and pointed at your nearest transmitter; there’s no such thing as a “digital aerial”. An attic aerial can work where the signal is strong, and having a rooftop one fitted costs from about €130 to €200 for one TV on Irish installers’ price lists.

Most Saorview problems trace back to the aerial. Not the TV, not the box, not the weather. The lump of aluminium on the roof that nobody has looked at since 2009. Sort the aerial and the rest sorts itself.

There is no such thing as a digital aerial

Let’s get this out of the way, because somebody in a shop will try to sell you one. Saorview is broadcast in the UHF band, the same band the old analogue RTÉ used. One Wicklow installer puts it bluntly on their site: there is no such thing as a digital aerial, and a standard wideband UHF aerial is what you need.

RTÉ’s transmission company, 2rn, gives the same guidance: keep the aerial to the UHF TV band and filter out anything above or below. In plain terms, buy a normal wideband UHF aerial from a reputable brand, or let the installer supply one. That’s it.

There’s a wrinkle about “grouped” aerials, which are tuned to a narrower slice of the band and can pull in a slightly stronger signal from a specific transmitter. For most homes wideband is the safe choice, and it’s what installers fit by default.

Rooftop, attic or indoor

2rn’s own FAQ makes the hierarchy clear: terrestrial transmission is designed and built around rooftop reception. Everything else is a compromise that works in some homes and not in others.

The honest advice: if you own the house and the coverage checker doesn’t say “excellent”, put it on the roof and be done with it for twenty years. If you rent, or you’re in a strong-signal urban area, try the attic first because it costs nothing to test.

Checking before you buy

Saorview’s coverage checker asks for your address and tells you which transmitter to aim at and how strong the signal should be. Saorview says the result is indicative only and recommends an installer if you’re unsure. Use it anyway; it tells you whether you’re in attic territory or rooftop territory, and it tells the installer which direction to point.

Two things it can’t see: the tree that’s grown twenty feet since the map was drawn, and the apartment block that went up across the road. If your neighbours have aerials, look at where they point. That’s the transmitter.

If you’re buying the aerial yourself. Most installers supply one, but if you’re fitting an attic aerial or want to know what’s going on the roof, these are the options. The high-gain version is for fringe areas the checker rates fair or worse. The amplifier is for feeding several rooms from one aerial, not for rescuing a weak signal; see “Skip the booster” below.

What installers charge

We looked at what Irish installers publish on their own price pages. These are indicative figures as of September 2026, not quotes; yours will depend on the county, the roof and how many rooms you want fed. The full breakdown, including dishes, is in what an aerial or dish install costs.

Things that push the price up: two-storey houses with a chimney mount, long cable runs, feeding several rooms (which needs an amplifier and a splitter), and anywhere an installer has to bring a tower or a second person. Things that keep it down: a bungalow, an existing cable that’s in good nick, and a clear line to the transmitter.

Repair or replace?

If you already have an aerial and the picture is patchy, a repair is often the cheaper route:

• Channels come and go with the weather. Signal is marginal. Realignment or a higher mount usually fixes it.
• Some channels fine, others blocky. Often a cable or connector problem, especially if the cable is the old brown stuff from the 1990s.
• Nothing at all after a storm. The aerial has moved or come down. Realign or replace.
• Nothing at all and it was working last week. Check the fly lead behind the TV before ringing anyone. It’s embarrassing how often it’s that.

Before ringing anyone, run through our no-signal checklist. It takes ten minutes and rules out the free fixes.

A realignment at around €75 or a cable replacement from around €90 beats a full install if the aerial itself is sound. A good installer will tell you which you need, and we don’t earn more from an installer when you choose the dearer option.

Skip the booster. 2rn’s Saorview FAQ says an amplifier placed next to the TV is more or less pointless in the vast majority of homes, because it boosts the noise along with the signal. A better aerial, properly aimed, is the fix.

Extra rooms

A single aerial can feed the whole house. The installer fits a distribution amplifier in the attic and runs a cable to each room. Ask for it at quote time: adding rooms later means a second call-out. The Dublin price above for five rooms gives you an idea of the scale.

If running cables through a finished house is a non-starter, a streaming stick in the second room with the RTÉ Player app gets you the main channels live over wifi, with no cable at all.

Aerials and planning permission

A TV aerial on a house is exempt from planning permission under the Planning and Development Regulations, as long as it doesn’t go more than 6 metres above the roof, according to the county council copy of the rules we checked. Nobody’s aerial is 6 metres above the roof. Apartments are different: the block’s management company usually has rules, and the fitting is to a wall you don’t own. Ask before booking anyone.

Choosing an installer

Saorview is clear that there’s no such thing as a “Saorview Approved installer”; the approval scheme is for TVs and boxes. It points to three trade bodies that assess installers before they join: the National Guild of Master Craftsmen, the Irish Satellite and Aerial Association and the Confederation of Aerial Industries. It also says neither Saorview nor RTÉ sends people to your door to check your aerial. If someone on the doorstep says otherwise, they’re selling something.

Questions to ask, red flags and what’s in a standard job are in aerial installation costs.

The apartment question

If you’re in an apartment, check two things before getting quotes. First, whether the building already has a communal aerial system, which many do. There may be a socket on the wall that’s been ignored for years. Second, whether the management company allows individual aerials or dishes. Our quote form has an apartment option so the installer knows to ask.

What to do now

1. Run Saorview’s coverage checker for your address.
2. If you have an aerial, plug it in and retune. It might just work. Check the result against the channel list.
3. If it doesn’t, get up to three quotes. Say whether you want extra rooms done at the same time.
4. Once the aerial is in, you have every Irish channel for free, for the price of the licence you already pay. Then work out what else you actually need with the finder.