Martin963

Well I don't know that one, but after experience with two Philips DVD recorders I would NEVER permit myself to buy another.   Shockingly klutzy software,   and unreliable recording (disc claimed as blank immediately after recording even though it will play back on another machine on which it wasn't burnt). The have a pretty poor reputation as recorders if you trawl through digital spy forum.

A friend of ours in Cornwall had a two way satellite system before Broadband came along to his village - ie it worked for both downloading and uploading.   However this sort is relatively rare and pretty expensive. There's another system that's been mentioned here (back in the autumn I think) where the satellite (Atlantic Bird 1 was it at 12 deg west) downloads to you but you use a conventional dial up for the upload side.   It turned out there was quite a low usage level before additional charges kicked in. I don't know if anyone actually tried it...

bjsliv - sent you a pm in response to yours;  thanks again.

Thanks to all who have clarified things.  I'm very grateful.

Danny - yes I see the small print now - I would call some of the puffs misleading.   I would certainly think twice about signing up to Neuf if one ALWAYS has to pay €45 to escape. I've been researching this for two hours now and I'm no more confident about any of these operators than I was before. Makes Eclipse in the UK (who we've signed up to recently) look superb;  they were highly recommended for Broadband and have totally lived up to their recommendation.

Yep absolutely right - I was muddling up my operators!  And yes when I cost it all out it all seems to add up to about €500 - €600 per year whether I stick with dial up and Onetel and France Telecom or go for one of the ADSL options with continued FT line rental.  We had a power cut of over 30 hours last October (with the Maire coming for drinks and nibbles as well,  came on just in time to cool the wine);  most of the cuts are much shorter of course but the mother in law I think would be worried if we were out of contact that long.  Having just had a call from a friend in Exeter (30 miles away) via VOIP I must say the quality was odd (to put it mildly) and I'm not sure I'd want to rely on it - it was quite an effort at times and I didn't recognise his voice at the start. Amalogue baseband is how the a conventional phone works (baseband because it's not modulated onto any sort of carrier, ie works at audio frequencies) and analogue because it's not digital (analogue because at any point in the system the signal is analogous to the original).  Sorry, broadcast terminology crept in......

thanks for that bjsliv.  Curiously enough I notice that the Neuf offer of ADSL you mention and which I could have (and which is now tempting me) says: Haut débit à 512k à 19,90€/mois Pas de frais de mise en service, pas d’engagement de duréeNombre d’adresses emails illimité, espace site web 100 MoTéléphonie Neuf en présélectionI take that to mean that you could cancel it when you're not there.   As we are in Devon for most of the winter each year it could be worth cancelling.   Could you (without appearing to pry into your movements!) not do that for the periods you're not in France?

sorry that last post is nonsense of course because my mind has become addled - a neuf box is not the same as a freebox!   Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Very kind of you to respond so quickly. In fact while you were so doing I found the right bit of the free website and am offered (on my line) basic ADSL for €19.90 per month or 100% Neuf box for €34.90.   I'm trying to figure out what you're on (will be on) for 29.90.   My bottom line is that we MUST keep the analogue baseband phone due to the number of power cuts we suffer.  Do you know if 100% Neuf box is degroupage partiel or whether it's just phone calls over ADSL but with France Telecom rental....? In doing the comparisons I have just been trawling through our Onetel phone bills on line and realise that they haven't charged us for a single international call since June, normally we are up for €18 per month calls to the UK.  They've managed to bill us for the France calls.   Maybe my bloody-mindedness not to go on to their preselection but to carry on with the prefix of 1638 has paid off.....    Mind you they may have turned us off completely as we've been back in the UK since October!    Will own up when we get back over to France.

Having got more and more submerged in the muddle that seems to be degroupage in rural areas,  I've hit a new snag in my research into Club Internet - maybe someone can confirm....? I appear to be in "zone 2" which seems to imply that all the prices are higher than those "advertised" (for zone 1) on the main welcome pages.   Ordinary ADSL jumps from €14.90 to €26.90 per month,  and with unlimited phone calls thrown in the price is €31.90 (excluding renting the box) instead of €26.90.   Coupled with paying France Telecom for the line it suddenly works out quite a bit more expensive than I was reckoning. Looks like we'll be staying on dial up for a while yet. Is this zoning universal or are there other companies that don't penalise us rural dwellers....?

I've just had a vision of an entire village up in arms at the Mairie,  complaining about a Brit hangin off one end of their balcony! Lovely that, made me smile.

I don't know about now,  but the first batches of Sky minidishes had matching lnb's that would only fit them.

I'd like to thank everyone who's contributed to this thread,   as the questions posed and problems raised will help me decide what to do when we go back over to France in April.   A quick test of our line from the UK suggests that we will only get 640 k,  and in addition the Club Internet site disagrees with the testing site as to whether we can go for degroupée or not.   So we'll probably sign up for the basic ADSL service and see how that goes first. It does seem to be a complete minefield,  and knowing how difficult it is to get out of a contract in France (whether the other side troubles itself to fulfil its obligations or not) all this info has been enormously helpful.   I'm sure I'll not be the only person grateful if this thread becomes a sort of sticky.... Many thanks everyone!

As to the cover,  most of them that I have come across are held down taughtly and I think most cats would have a lot of trouble getting under the edge. Ours (we have 7 French cats and 1 English one) play on the cover in the winter,  and to date have never fallen in in the summer.   I wouldn't rate their intelligence as high,  although the French ones were born to the place,  and the English one fell in a pond as a kitten because the previous day he had walked across the ice that the weather had conveniently manufactured specially for him and was surprised to find it gone. I really wouldn't worry - what you could try is jumping about and splashing a lot in the pool when it's open and the cat is watching - even perhaps ensure a few drops accidentally fall on him.  But even the dumbest cats are really quite canny....

Interesting Ron.   The cynic in me doubts that Sky are putting all these hurdles in the way for any other reason than to tighten up their control over where boxes are.  The advice to everyone is:  don't pay Sky for the pleasure of being shackled unless you have thought it through. It won't be long until HD boxes are available from the shops (provided the BBC keep on transmitting HD,  although there's a question mark over that I believe) and these will be free of the Sky shackles (although they won't of course work on Sky channels).

....  but presumably not as a mirror sub'd box with the parent box at a different address (which is how I understand the OP to be planning their set up)

I think until the OP tells us if the two contracts are separate or whether it's a mirror sub contract we can't help any further.   I took it to mean a mirror sub (which relies on the two boxes being telephonically co-incident - I'm not sure one can get a stand alone Sky contract for £120 pa) but if they're two separate contracts.... OP - where are you?

I'm no expert on Sky contracts,  but my understanding is that for Sky Multiroom (ie 2nd mirror sub) Sky DO regularly check that both boxes are plugged in to the SAME phone line.   So bringing one over to France for extended periods is likely to provoke Sky into demanding two separate full price contracts. But not myself being prepared to pay Sky anything more than the bare minimum I'm not an expert on these high value subs.

Having only just managed (or rather a friend did most of it) to set up a wireless network at home,  I'm no expert on this. But sadly I think there is a "catch",  ie it isn't turn up and use it free http://www.orange-wifi.com/offre_wifi_pass.htm seems to suggest you need a code But I could be wrong! Pierre zfp beat me to it and knows a lot more about it than I do!

Too kind. I'm amused that D*Y*K*E has been censored by the forum filters.  I'm innocent guv!  

No don't worry,  satellite is safe for a few years yet. Rights holders are currently in a far-too-important position,  but the reason the satellite feed of the BBC is safe is as follows: When the BBC first went onto digital satellite they were on Astra 2 A & B,  which had pan European coverage.   They got Sky to scramble the signal on their behalf and the copyright people were happy as in theory you could only get a card to watch if you had a UK address.   Sky made a packet,  and the wise Greg Dyke looked for a way to save money.   He found it by moving the BBC onto Astra 2 D (which had been subsequently launched) and whose beam is more tightly targetted on the UK.  This allowed him to end the expensive Videoguard scrambling because the BBC could argue that its signal was confined to the UK Now we all know that the BBC Astra 2 D signal spills over a lot of Europe (right down to S Spain if you use a 1.5 m dish) but the OFFICIAL Astra 2 D map satisfies the rights holders,  who don't really want to get into a fight with the BBC as they probably have more to lose than Auntie. At the time of the move there was a lot of ill informed speculation that Astra 2 D would be tipped/moved/reduced in power etc etc.   It won't be - it's operated by Astra and they don't modify complex satellites for organisations as small as the BBC (!). The slight danger in the future is that the next generation of birds WILL have much more tightly focussed beams - but that's a few years off yet.

Well at least with the digital switch over on TV situation you can buy an adaptor so that legacy equipment still functions.  It's the prospect of completely binning DAB radios that is going to make for an interesting marketing challenge in the next few years. 

In some ways it is disappointing;  however the failure of DAB in France allows them to start afresh with the new technologies and coding systems that are now available. The UK is saddled with technology that - whilst revolutionary at the time - is now looking very dated.   Witness the fact that more and more stations are broadcasting in mono on DAB - yes you read that right - MONO - because the lack of spectrum capacity and the inefficient coding means that to add stations you have to cut bit rates for the ones already broadcating. It's very unfortunate that the UK will now suffer for some years with this situation (as existing DAB radios cannot be upgraded to the new coding available) and no-one is going to be happy if they're told that their existing DAB radio will stop working to make way for the "new" radio system.....

This has been covered before,  but in essence DAB has not taken off in France and there was talk of it being switched off soon.  It only covered the very big towns like Paris/Nantes/Marseille. In addition it uses the L band (1500 MHz approx) unlike the UK which uses Band 3 (around 220 MHz).   Very very few UK sets are L band capable (although a few are).  If you want lots of French radio use Fm or (better) satellite (Astra 1 or Hotbird)

The encryption system that Sky uses (and thus used by C4 and C5 etc) is videoguard,  and in flagrant disregard of EU legislation Murdoch refuses to allow the incorporation of the decryption circuits in anything other than Sky boxes.  Generally the cheap boxes in Bricowhatever are FTA,  ie they have no decryption at all,   The next stage up is a receiver with a CAM slot;  this allows you to buy the necessary CAM (conditional access module) and slide it into the slot.  A CAM is the same size as a PCMCIA unit but configured differently;  in this case it acts as a specific card reader for that specific encryption system.   Having bought your CAM and slid it in,  you then slide your legitimate satellite card in;  for TPS you'd buy a Viaccess CAM and slide in a TPS card,  for Canalsat you'd buy a Mediaguard/Aston CAM and slide in a Canalsat card.   With Sky you OUGHT under EU law to be able to buy a Videoguard CAM but - guess what - they aren't made. Having mentioned TPS and Canalsat,  I should add that they don't make it easy to buy cards on their own;  they'd much rather (unlike Sky) rent you their own box to put the card in. So you need a Sky box for a Sky card,  whether sub or FTV.