As you may have already read, RTÉ is finally giving the RTÉ Player a long overdue overhaul. The rollout hasn’t been very smooth with the Beta currently only available on Desktop. There is some good news for desktop users though. While RTÉ said they’ve listened to feedback to improve the ad experience:
Will it have 13 ads before you can watch a second of content?
— Rob Magee (@robmagee86) December 2, 2018
The internet has gone one further and removed ads altogether. Massive hat tip to Dean, Goosed.ie resident Redditor who spotted this over there.
How To Remove Ads from RTÉ Player
Yup, you can just block the ads altogether. How long this will last for remains a but of an unknown, but enjoy it while you can. With this little trick, you’ll get to smirk as RTÉ Player videos do this weird little dance at the start, skipping through the ads and starting straight into that show you actually wanted to watch.
What You’ll Need
- Chrome (it may work with Firefox too)
- uBlock Origin (I tested others and couldn’t get this to work
- A snippet of code (copy and paste job)
- RTÉ Player Beta
Right, let’s get to it.
Blocking Ads on RTÉ Player Beta
Open up Chrome. That was an easy start, right?
Next up, you’ll need to install the uBlock Origin Chrome extension. Once that’s installed, open up the extension from the top of your browser. If you’re wondering what that looks like, it’ll be similar to the one in this here picture, in the orange box:
In the window that opens, you need to go to the tab called “My Filters”:
Finally, you’ll need the blocking code. Don’t worry, this is a simple copy and paste job:
Then switch tabs, popping into Filter Lists and click on Update Now.
This is the best part. Get on over to RTÉ Player, click into the Beta and pick out what you want to watch. Next, you’ll see the ads freak out briefly before you show starts!
Isn’t that great!
Is Ad Blocking Ok?
I’m not even going to say this is a grey area. Ad Blocking is perfectly fine. If you are one of the good ones who also pay a TV license, it’s a double whammy. I think the real question is whether or not it’s moral that you have to sit through crappy ads from the state broadcaster!
