Martin963

In fact you could have cancelled your Sky contract whenever you wanted as the card retains the ability to get ITV/C4/C5 even when you stop paying Sky.  However,  indeed,  as of today you could take the card out and still watch ITV. But hang on to it because even after you cancel you'll need it for C4/C5 and (as far as I can see) Sky 3;  (our FTV card is getting it - for what it's worth).

Whilst respecting all points of view on this discussion,  I have to say that our French friends and neighbours (who after all have much greater experience of France and French legislation) with private pools are: a) not at the moment doing anything about their pools,  either with alarms,  fences,  or anything else b) totally rule out the possibility of universal inspection of every pool in France. c)  certain that the full €45000 fine will only be imposed following an accident where adequate precautions have not been taken. Now obviously they may all be wrong,  but I have to say that in light of their greater experience of French custom I think it is too easy for us as "foreigners" to get into the mindset that at midnight on 1st Jan 2006 an army of one million inspectors is going to appear - one at each pool - and levy the full fine on anyone who happens (for example) to have put a winter cover over a pool alarm (as we have!). Having spent €1000 on a pool alarm worth €80 and now finding that I'm not supposed to put a cover over it,  j'ai ras le bol with this daft legislation.  In our case the nearest house is 700 m away,  the nearest child is over 1000 m away, we have 8 cats who dance on the cover whilst we are away,  and even if the alarm goes off no-one is going to hear it as we are in Devon for the winter.  How daft can it get?  I'm in no way belittling the need to save lives,  but the more I see of this farce the more cynical I become - after all if it REALLY WAS TO SAVE LIVES THE VAT WOULD HAVE BEEN 5.5%. As it stands I reckon Chirac gets a minimum of €200,000,000 in VAT receipts alone on this exercise.

I know you good folk in the Post Bag section don't like to get bogged down in the sort of technical detail  found in the satellite section,  but perhaps one or two of you might be interested to know that ITV has just (this am) gone free to air. This means that any old digital satellite receiver bought in Brico-whatever is now capable of receiving Coronation Street and the rest. Won't bore you with the details,  more can be found in the satellite forum. Sorry to come crashing in here! Martin

Well I'm delighted to report (and I HOPE it's not premature) that ITV is at this very moment in the process of going free-to-air.   ITV2 went FTA a few minutes ago and ITV 1 Anglia (10.714 GHz, H, 22000 5/6) is clear. After five years of spineless grovelling to Sky, ITV have followed the BBC's lead and chucked off Mr Murdoch's Videoguard shackles.   This co-incides with the launching of ITV4,  although it's still not clear if this will happen on Satellite tonight or in a few days. So all you Corrie fans who don't have Sky boxes will have a good week!

Well I'm not surprised you are having a certain amount of trouble as Bannon and I seemed to be giving you - on the face of it- conflicting advice!   I hasten to add that the advice doesn't conflict - Bannon and I are just coming from two slightly different directions! Hotbird and Astra 1 only carry a limited number of French free to air channels.   That is why I suggested Atlantic Bird 3 (formerly,  as you correctly worked out,  one of the Telecoms (2B then 2D)). The slight draw back to this is that the public service channels are FTA on AB3 due to a quirk in the way digital terrestrial TV has panned out.  There is a thread about this (FTA on Atlantic Bird 3 from a few days ago). However,  the longer the quirk remains the more likely it is to become permanent.   But I digress. The parameters you need are 11.591 GHz,  vertical pol,  SR 20000 FEC 2/3.  http://www.lyngsat.com/ab3.html If you can,  key this lot into the receiver and then wave the dish around whilst watching the signal meter (assuming this is how you're doing it!).   If necessary you might need to tell the receiver that you are creating a new transponder with these details as - as you say - when the receiver was made the parameters were not known.   Otherwise modify the details of a transponder that you don't need to use. It has to be said that the analogue route is in some ways the safer one,  but in trying the digital feeds on AB3 you would have the dish pointing the right way if they are eventually switched off - all you would have to do is get an analogue box which would be pretty cheap and connect it up to your AB3 dish.  On this digital transponder you have all the main networks minus TF1 and M6,  but with France 4,  Arte (24 hr version) and France 5 (24 hr version) and the parliamentary channels as bonuses (bonii?) Please come back if there is still a problem  

12.168  GHz   27500  2/3 V http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/skyuk.html Bon courage Martin

With regards to Sky (Astra 2) and the 4 o/p LNB:   provided the LNB is a true 4 output one and provided it will fit onto the mounting of the dish arm,  then yes that's fine.   There is a type of 4 output LNB that is used in blocks of flats which outputs Hi/V Hi/H Lo/H Lo/V  but if you didn't ask for one of those then you're probably OK.   The gain of these 4 o/p LNB's can be marginally lower than a normal one  but if the dish works OK even under adverse weather conditions then this shouldn't be a problem. There are various satellites on which French TV appears (Astra 1,  Hotbird,  and Atlantic Bird 3) but assuming you are referring to free-to-air then it will be Atlantic Bird 3.   In which case it is a shade to the west of true south.  Have a look at the sun at 13.30 ish CET tomorrow (it would have been 14.30 CET today!)  and it will be - very roughly - there (at this time of the year the sun roughly follows the satellite arc).  So there's no reason why you can't mount the dishes near eachother provided they are on a south facing wall and there are no trees in the way,  but the French one will need to be pointing south ish whilst the Astra 2 Sky one is pointing a bit east of south.  If you see what I mean.

Not an easy choice Anton.... For me (when in the UK where all our sets are PAL) the analogue service on 5 degrees west has come back into its own following my discovery that a Philips DVD recorder (inseted into the signal chain) acts as a SECAM -> PAL transcoder of the highest quality.   These transmissions are likely to be around for at least five years (so they say,  because they are the back-up distribution system if the national microwave network goes down) and are of the highest quality.... Sounds as though you're going to get grubby whichever route you follow!

They have indeed gone but you can get them back.  All that has happened is that the symbol rate has been upped from 19 k approx to 20,000 ksps.   This is enough of a change to throw your receiver off the scent as it were. There has been a certain amount of "official discussion" about this service,  the situation is that it remains in-the-clear at the moment because the 6th TNT/DTT multiplex has not been allocated which means that the "public service" channels do not have to share the satellite frequency with this sixth service for delivery out to the terrestrial UHF TNT transmitters .  As a result these "distribution" signals do not have to be "compressed" to fit all the services onto the transponder concerned. At the moment there are no immediate plans to start this sixth multiplex,  and it seems that there is a certain "agreement" that leaving these public service channels "open" on satellite takes the pressure off the protests from some parts of France deprived at present of TNT signals on UHF. The CSA that controls these things seems about as much use as OFCOM were over ITV and Sky and their dispute - ie do nothing until all the parties get bored with squabbling..... Do a rescan as follows: 11.591 GHz,  Vertical pol,  20000 ksps symbol rate  Forward error correction 2/3.  http://www.lyngsat.com/ab3.html   

This is SO sad,  but here goes            Vision/Sound  MHz ch 59  775.25/781.75 ch 62  799.25/805.75 ch 65  823.25/829.75 ch 06  184.00/190.50 ch 35  583.25/589.75 ch 37  599.25/605.75   A broken connection or old cabling could well be stopping the signal.   Round here in 24 we get a lot of grilled signal amplifiers after storms,  if they are burnt out they act as remarkably effective attenuators! Bon courage

CHERBOURG LA LANDE PANVERSE 2C 59         CHERBOURG LA LANDE PANVERSE 4C 6 CHERBOURG LA LANDE PANVERSE 1C 65 CHERBOURG LA LANDE PANVERSE 3C 62 CHERBOURG LA LANDE PANVERSE 6C 37 CHERBOURG LA LANDE PANVERSE 5C 35 Assuming your aerial is pointing at Cherbourg Digosville (a main station) then these are the channel numbers.  However,  depending exactly where you are there may be a closer low power relay. But do you have a French TV,  or one capable of tuning system L? If not the scanning process (or indeed a manual tune) will not yield results. Let us know if further help is needed.

As bjsliv says, the future of these channels as non-encrypted is not clear. However, this month's French satellite magazine suggests that it is increasingly likely that they will be left in the clear as encrypting them six months after they first appeared might cause something of an uproar amongst people who pay la redevance but do not have access to DTT (TNT) transmissions. It should be noted that a Sky box is NOT suitable to watch the Atlantic Bird 3 transmissions, as the symbol rates for these boxes has been (deliberately) crippled to discourage their use on transmissions other than Murdoch's (although some other transmissions can in fact be received on Sky boxes, it just isn't very convenient). Perhaps also worth pointing out that TF1 and M6 are NOT available on Canalsatellite, as they take blatant commercial advantage of the lack of "must carry" legislation in France. The only way of watching these national non-subscription channels digitally (outside the current TNT service areas) is via a subscription to TPS, a truly unfair situation from the point of view of the viewer. (TF1 and M6 are the major shareholders in TPS, although M6 apparently "want out"). Bottom line: don't buy a digital receiver just for the Atlantic Bird 3 transmissions, but if you have one already then it's a useful service, at least for the moment.

To amplify derf/les a bit,  in France you need a <<terminal numerique>>  with satellite dish (la parabole),  including a "tete universelle" (universal LNB). Normally decodeur might suggest to the French that you want to receive something encrypted,  the point being that the BBC (and soon ITV) are free to air.   Hope this isn't splitting hairs too much

@ andy It'll all stay where it is, ie on Astra 2D. 2D is part of a cluster of satellites within a few hundred kms of eachother in space. Viewed from a satellite dish they appear as one. However, Astra 2D (which was from memory purchased "off the peg" by Astra) has a tighter transmission beam focused centrally on the UK, whereas Astra 2A and 2B were designed to cover most of Europe (depending on which frequencies and beams were used). So when the BBC went FTA they had to move their rights-sensitive channels from 2A to 2D to appease the copyright holders (claiming that the spill into Europe was minimal, while we of course know it's a bit more than that!) ITV are already on 2D so there will be no change there. ITV and the BBC do not want to pay for two separate satellite positions, so what ITV now (and the BBC a couple of years ago) have been aiming for (and what ITV has been fighting Sky for nearly a year now on) is how to accommodate these changes so that people with Sky Digiboxes still get the correct "region" when they dial up 101 for BBC 1 and 103 for ITV. Sky have been holding out for huge sums of money to continue the regionalisation scheme for ITV, hence the delay while they squabbled in front of Ofcom. By staying on Astra 2 the BBC and ITV remain available to the 6 million or so Sky boxes, but can together now (thanks to no longer being encrypted) market a "Freesat" platform completely independent of Sky, who have lost the income from encryption and now only control the regionalisation issues for people with Sky boxes.

One of the news links stated clearly that ITV was in talks about the rights issues (ie the "problem" usually blamed (conveniently) for carrying on with encryption).   My understanding is that no such copyright problems were encountered with ITV shows; (incidentally the only show the BBC lost when they kicked off the shackles of Sky's encryption was "24" ,  and that was because in a roundabout way "24" was "owned" by one of Murdoch's shows);  it seems we can indeed look forward to encryption being a thing of the past.   As it is on the BBC.   And excellent news it is too. As an aside,  Sky owns the "videoguard" encryption system and have always refused to commercialise it outside of its own Skyboxes;   hence my use of the term "shackles".   By teaming up with the BBC,  ITV and the BBC can encourage people to buy FTA satellite receivers.   This suits all parties here, as the more FTA equipment is in people's homes by the time the government next turns its baleful gaze on brodcasting the harder it will be to introduce subscription/pay per view TV,  which is what the BBC (and probably ITV to an extent) fear most.... 

Well it's been a long time a'coming but it does look pretty official now. Great news for those who don't want anything to do with Uncle Rupert's little empire;  you will (eventually,  no firm dates yet,  "next few months") be able to use any DVB-compliant (ie digital) satellite receiver to view ITV's stable of programmes along with the already FTA BBC.   In other words,  no need for a Skybox and Sky/FTV card. The details and lots of links here: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=277900&page=1&pp=25 Sadly no similar excitement concerning C4 and C5............

1)   Bricodepot or similar.   They often include a dish anyway,  but for as low as €70 that's still not bad. 2)   The existing dish will be set on 5 deg west and you need to go to 28 deg east.  Standing behind the dish and looking southish,  this means swinging the arm and dish to your left (by as much as 50 cms VERY approx, depends on the design),  in addition you will need to tip the arm downwards towards the ground (c 2 - 3 cms approx,  same caveat on accuracy).   It would only be necessary to displace to a new location if your view (roughly SSE) is blocked by trees/buildings etc 3)   Sky digiboxes are notoriously awkward (deliberately) to set up without a beeper,  but almost all non-crippled "ordinary" boxes  are far easier,  with an on-screen signal meter for strength and more importantly quality.   A lot are already programmed to receive the BBC so viewing the results of swinging the dish around is made very easy to observe. One point though - you need a "universal LNB" on the dish.   You probably have that already,  but some older French installations have a "telecom" LNB which isn't suitable for the "lower band" BBC frequencies.   There should be a little spec plate on the LNB somewhere,  the important figures you should check for are LO 9.75/10.6 (GHz).   If it says 10.75 (from memory) you will need to replace (poss with the one that may come with the box you buy if it includes a dish). Good luck.

How very frustrating for you. Problems with individual channels can be difficult to solve – my parents for years had terrible BBC 2 reception even though the signal on BBC 1 & ITV was good. In the end (years later) we discovered that an aerial mounted lower and on a different part of the house solved the problem. The BBC used to recommend mounting aerials on a cranked pole so that twisting the support allowed the aerial to be tried in many different positions in the (same) horizontal plane. If access to your aerial is easy then try moving it (if possible!) a couple of feet from side to side and forwards and backwards to see if this clears the problem (it may cure FR3 and spoil one of the others of course). I forgot to ask – is the aerial outside? (much better if it is, attic aerials are not nearly as satisfactory). Another thought – do you have a mobile phone (or DECT phone) near the set? Or anything else electronic that might be causing problems on FR3? As teamedup suggested, another possible solution is an aerial amplifier. The virtues of these can often be overrated, but sometimes they do the job. Teamedup is also right in saying a group-specific aerial might pull in more signal, problem is you may knock out FR5 & M6 if you buy what in the UK would be termed a group A aerial (chs 21 – 35 ish). Wideband aerials came along precisely to combat the problem of new programmes coming on stream on channels widely separated from the original group, though the disadvantage is a loss of antenna gain. To be honest, you’d probably have to order one of these group-specific aerials specially in France nowadays, and it may cost as much as the analogue satellite solution, crazy though the economics of that may seem. The problem with the analogue satellite solution is that you will lose the regional content on FR3, maybe that is not important? Personally I doubt it’s the set, most of these things are so stable nowadays that the AFC does nothing anyway. Interesting problem, hope you get it sorted.

@ tourangelle - I in NO way consider myself an adept diplomat (in fact I fear I am by nature quite the reverse), but here are two suggestions: If the request not to argue in anything other than one’s mother tongue fails, then try refusing to take part in a discussion on the EU unless the other party has regular access to some form of UK (or perhaps German /Italian/whatever) media. None of our French friends reads or watches or listens to any sort of "international" (ie non-French view point) media, and the great thing is that they all know that I DO watch both French TV News AND the BBC (or whatever). Explain that unless they have watched regularly for a long period the other point of view then there is no point in debating further. This one works a treat, particularly if you can point up (as I frequently do) major international stories that TF1 (particularly) have simply ignored. And the second: arm yourself with lots of factual questions about France’s position in the EU. Don’t spew out facts and figures, just ask your would-be "attacker" how much – for example – France contributes net to the EU, and how much the UK contributes, things like that. If a few simple questions of this sort illicit the constant response "I don’t know" then the chances are you’ll shame them into silence. But just saying you don’t want to discuss things ought to be enough (never is though is it??!!) @vraititi; you are quite right, I’ve watched TF1 from home in Devon and also in France for long enough to know that what you say is spot on. That’s fine, but it shouldn’t really masquerade as "Les Infos de 13.00" when there is so little hard news in it. If they called it "au travers notre pays" or something like that it would be more suitably titled. But calling it a news programme is – whether judged by French or other standards – simply a misnomer! But like you – I LOVE IT - as a useful guide to France and its traditions – we’ve even gone on jaunts to places where they have reported from (eg La Rhune, Curemonte) as it makes such a good travel ideas guide.

Actually I must refine my previous post (particularly if Mazan is watching us!).   That 10 dB figure applies to VHF band 1 and I suspect that at UHF the protection afforded by cross polarisation is greater,  but still not enough to protect existing French transmissions from vertically polarised DTT at Fremont Point.   Certainly by the time you get to satellite frequencies it is significantly greater;  in fact one frequency on Hispasat used (maybe still does use) cross polarisation to carry two separate multiplexes,  and it DID work,  you could get two different sets of channels on the one frequency by altering the polarisation.   Don't know why more use of this isn't made to economise on frequency usage.....

In my earlier post I berated the paucity of real news on TF1. Interesting therefore that there was absolutely NO mention of Mr Blair and the European Parliament debate today on the 13.00 bulletin. So it seems that having thrown their spanner in the works by voting NON,  the French no longer take much of an interest in European affairs. Or is it perhaps (I tread very carefully here,  please don't shoot me down!) that no-one wants to admit in public that maybe,  just maybe,  Mr Blair's ideas should at least be given a hearing in France...... I should stress that some of the above is tongue-in-cheek,  I'm sure it'll be covered at 20.00 on TF1

Hi Paul From what I remember cross polarisation only achieves about 10 dB of protection,  and I seem to recall you need a lot more than that (over 40 dB ?) to allow channel sharing,  even for the same programme (which this wouldn't be). Without wishing to stir up a debate in these engineeringly hallowed portals,  I do remember that the French would object on principle to any applications the BBC made to the EBU/ITU to change/open UK transmitters (radio or TV).   Persuading them to allow DTT at all was a struggle, and a number of UK DTT tx's opened on low power simply because of international objections (powers were often increased (eg Rowridge) when it was proved that there really was no problem).   I suspect that finding 6 DTT channels  clear around Fremont Point is just too difficult (particularly as Rennes St Pern is transmitting TNT now)  I suspect that part of the problem is also getting programme feeds out to the Isles - I can probably check how DTT is distributed but it would take a while.   But this has often been a problem in the past.

Well the locals are right,  Mt St Vincent is the transmitter for Le Creusot and area,  and at 5.5 kW power on the main channels it ought to deliver a reasonable service where you are,  provided your aerial is well sited and oriented,  and with a reasonable gain.   Incidentally my data says the mast is 100 m tall. Do you know if your aerial is wideband (probably is if purchased in France;  an aerial of the wrong group impairs reception,  but this is unlikely if purchased - as you say -  recently).   Mt St Vincent uses the following channels:   TF1 - 35  FR2 - 33   FR3 - 30  Canal + - 67  FR5 (lower power) - 38  M6 (lower power) - 60.   You could check perhaps on the TV whether these are the channels that you are actually tuned into. I suspect that an alternative service might come in from the Autun transmitter,  actually sited on the Haut Folin in the Foret de St Prix (north west of you).   The channels in use there are 48/51/54/-/45/42  (the dash means there's no Canal +).   The power used here is 140 kW on the main channels so if you have good take off in that direction it might be worth trying if access to your aerial is easy. There are also transmitters of significant power near Macon and Dijon (Nuits St Georges) but I don't think these will be in the running as far as your location is concerned (I could be wrong of course).  Assuming your aerial is pointing at Mt St Vincent then check you are actually using the right channels.  I'm looking for obvious things here,  so please forgive me if they seem elementary.   The aerial that you bought should have the main boom horizontal,  or possibly a little (but  not much!) tipped up at the end nearest the transmitter;   the end with the shortest rods should be nearer the transmitter,  with the reflector and dipole (often a rectangular shaped loop of metal,  with the connection to the cable) at the furthest end from the transmitter.   For Mt St Vincent and Autun the rods should be horizontal.   Check all connections,  ideally the coax plug going into the TV should have the cable contacts soldered if at all possible,  but with some makes you just can't do it.  Have you tried watching the picture whilst making fine adjustments to the aerial direction (assuming it isn't dangerous for you to do this).   Are all the channels bad or are some worse than others?  FR5 and M6 might be consistently worse given their lower power.  How many elements (rods) has the aerial - it might need to have more and be therefore higher gain (more sensitive).... Apart from that it's difficult to make predictions.   Transmitter powers on UHF in France are generally somewhat lower than was originally envisaged in the planning,  mainly as a result of receivers becoming more sensitive and the concomitant opportunity to save on energy costs.   As a result,  and compared to the UK, it is often more critical to get the French aerial absolutely right,  where in similar conditions in the UK you would "get away with it". If all else fails the analogue satellite route is totally reliable,  and not that expensive (only a few € more expensive for the receiver and dish than a conventional aerial). Hope you get an improvement one way or another

Well you must have charmed them!    In the late 1980's their Marseille head-of-agency could not have been more helpful,  but by 1993 he was recounting tales of woe and cut backs,  and when I wrote to them about four years ago they simply replied that the information I was requesting was not suitable for the public domain, even though it had all (bar some minor updates) been published by the EBU for years.    But I'm glad it's not all gloom and doom.

@Saligobay It isn't fun being pounced on.   My strategy (living in an area of 24 where virtually no-one can speak English) is to say - politely - that I am not prepared to argue about the EU and the Constitution in anything other than my own tongue.  I speak fluent (although highly inaccurate) French,  people know that I can speak French,  and seem in the main to respect the fact that I can't however be expected to argue such complex issues in their language,  particularly when they can't reciprocate in anything other than their mother-tongue. But what depresses me the most is the lack of knowledge round here.   Few of our French friends read a paper,  most watch TF1 for the news,  and therefore really don't have a clue about anything other than Chirac's viewpoint. Another reason for shying away from complex discussions.....