Martin963

Yes to the first bit - you may lose TalkSport Radio.  Tant mieux perhaps.   Obviously - don't phone Sky from France. Upwards at a strange angle suggests a relay high up (the main stations if you are any distance away appear to be horizontal as far as inclination is concerned).  So probably you can't do much there. So to satellite.  If you just want TV5 do what Clare suggests and use a double headed LNB on your existing dish.   Might require a lot of tweaking,  and as I say the "monoblocs" you see in supermarkets are AFAIK all 6 deg ones,  ie Hotbird/Astra1,  not Astra2/Astra1.  So be careful.    You COULD (although it's clumsy) even use your Sky box for that (ie used on the LNB pointing at Astra 1), although I wouldn't recommend it for a permanent set up. If you want the publically funded networks then - at the moment - they are digitally FTA on 5 deg west,  Atlantic Bird 3.   There is no guarantee that this will continue,  as I have explained in other threads.   That lot does NOT include TF1 and M6 which are transmitted but in a non-standard (Newtech) format.    And you can't use a Sky box for this,  the symbol rate is an odd one and not within the ambit of a digibox. A cheap alternative solution is to use AB3 but with an ANALOGUE sat receiver.   This gets you TF1/FR2/3/5/M6.   The only drawback is that if you have a UK sourced PAL only TV it will display in black and white.   A French TV is fine.   I suspect that's what your most of neighours are doing.  I'm sorry it is no simpler.   If Canalsat and TPS weren't so greedy about encrypting channels that are publically or commercially funded you could use Astra 1 and Hotbird.   If the CSA got its act together and laid down a few ground rules about TNT coverage outside the present and future UHF service areas that would help too. 

OK, if I cancel my Sky subscription will I get channels 4 and 5 if I leave my Sky card in the Sky box? YES, the card will go on getting ch4 and 5 if you cancel.  Only until the next generation of cards though. I agree with your other half;  the Sky box leaves a lot to be desired in certain functions. I'd be very careful of buying French boxes on ebay.   We have the same problems with UHF TV reception in 24.  Sadly unless you get a good to excellent picture on analogue UHF at the moment TNT will not help;  the powers used are considerably lower and whilst they largely match the current analogue service areas they certainly don't exceed them. Might be worth checking that you are using the most suitable transmitter.  Check with a nieghbour,  are they using a main station or a local relay.   Could yours be an old installation on a main station where in fact there is a newer relay much nearer? Ch 4 are reported to be spitting blood over the encryption business as they are locked into a contract with Sky for another couple of years.   They (like many others) thought at the outset of digital satellite that the rights people would prevent FTA broadcasting.   The BBC (and good for them) bust through this myth and ITV followed;  (this is a slight simplification,  they had to wait for Astra 2D to arrive as well).   Now ch 4 are paying a lot for pointless encryption.   Ch 5 may be different - I think Sky have bought a stake in them so they may well never now go FTA.

The nationality of the dish doesn't matter (!) - it's where it's pointing.  Yours is pointing at Astra 2 at the moment.  It gets TV5 because that's part of a Sky subscription. A French Brico**** box (MPEG 2 Free to Air) would get all the BBC,  ITV,  radio and other free to air,  including junk with a dish pointing at Astra 2.  It WON'T get ch 4 ch 5 or Sky subscription programmes because it does not contain a VIDEOGUARD decryption system.   Videoguard is jealously guarded by Murdoch,  European law says that he should allow it to be incorporated on other manufacturers' boxes,  he refuses.   A French purchased FTA box would also NOT get TV5 from Astra2,  but it WOULD get TV5 if you had a dish on Astra 1.    http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/France.html You can get the other BBC regions on chs 941 onwards on a Sky box,  and the other ITV regions using the "other channel" function.   But you can't re-order the channel listings on a Sky box.   You can on practically any other box,  but you would of course then be without Sky 1 etc,  ch 4, ch 5 etc.  A supermarket box will probably show all the BBC and ITV regions automatically and you could re-order them however you like. As far as I know an old Canalsatellite box and card will not get the "terrestrial" channels via Astra 1.   I think the card is de-activated completely.  And because the public funded channels are encrypted on Astra 1 then without the card you won't get them.   Actually I'm surprised you've got one as Canalsatellite prefer you to rent them (at least that's what I thought). Sorry I've answered your question rather than Clare!

Sorry Clair,  you beat me to it. But presumably you don't get much French stuff (apart from TV5) FTA on Astra 1...?  Not the main French terrestrials for example.... And do watch out,  some of those dual tete systems are only for a 6 deg separation - and for Astra 2/Astra 1 you need 9 degrees.

Mr Murdoch has kindly designed his boxes to be as awkward to use for anything other than Sky as possible.  All you can do is use the favourites function to weed out the myriad channels you don't want/can't use,  and even that is fairly klutzy. The problem with buying a box is which satellite to point it too.  For the UK stuff you need Astra 2 at 28 deg east,  if you are a fan of TV5 it's free on Astra 1 (19 deg E) or Hotbird (13 deg E);  if - as you doubtless do - you want the main national French channels you will need AB3 at 5 deg west,  where the public channels are free digitally (for the moment) and TF1 and M6 are free in analogue SECAM. If you don't want 4 dishes (which is what we have both in Devon and 24) then you need a motorised dish...... It's a real casse-tete I'm afraid.  

Well indeed that may be the excise law but it doesn't make me feel any better. Chirac has made - I guess - about €200,000,000 on VAT from this across the Hexagon.  Hardly a proud record.......... A safety device is a safety device not a luxury in my book. But tax is there to make us all suffer,  not to be sensible!

At least you "only" paid €400.   I continue to seethe at the fact I paid the wretched Chirac €196 in TVA alone for the pleasure of complying with his law.    If it was really a question of child security the VAT would have been 5.5% or zero.   Like you I have a winter cover over the pool,  which I now gather invalidates the alarm.   It's probably shrieking now:  I am in Devon,  it is in Perigord. Personally I think a child who had wandered from the nearest house 700 m away would stand more chance of surviving and crawling to safety with the cover in place.   An alarm that no-one can hear isn't going to save it.      (In fact yer nearest actual child is over 1 km away) I shall start worrying about the fine when our French friends start worrying about it.  In the meantime I have installed an alarm.   Pointe finale.   Déclamation extravagante finie. And yes ours seems more sensitive to wind than waves!

....which slightly changes things.  Shows I read your post carefully though! Even so,  if punters like me (miles from the nearest house, but who have stumped up to be "legal",  unlike most of our French friends to date) find that €1000 hasn't brought us into line with the law I think there will be a mass disobedience movement.  Unless the government would like to refund us our money so that we can put it towards a new security system. My feeling,  which I know conflicts with others on here,  is that the enforcement part of all (at least for private owners) this will be quietly forgotten. But time will prove me right or wrong!

I would have thought that if alarms (on which many of us spent €1000 in order to be bonnes eleves) and even fences are removed from the list of approved measures then the legislation will be widely viewed as risible and will therefore fall into complete limbo. Which would be a shame given what it was designed to do (save lives). But maybe such an echec will sharpen up the need to re-establish parental responsibility by demonstrating the futility of legislating on matters best addressed in other ways.

I saw this too (on TF1) and was amazed that it caused so little comment. Seems as always that France can change its mind about things and no-one (least of all the media) seems to notice

Much the same experience but with free.fr.   Set it all up from the safety of the UK and installed the DUN parameters by hand rather than use the CD which came with the passcode IIRC.   No probs receiving emails to our UK based addresses,  although in 2005 it became impossible to use the French DUN in France to send emails from the UK addresses without changing the SMTP details to free,  but that now works fine too and recipients of our emails notice no difference.

I'm not sure that the shares become null and void (at least I hope not!);  I think it merely is the case that if one doesn't vote one may find that the ultimate decisions taken by everyone else become binding on one (eg one might be forced to take the full cash offer of £1.20).  We shall see - I'm going to delay sending my forms back for a few days.... Laters:  In fact I see from that link you very kindly posted that the Court Meetings and Shareholder meetings have been postponed for a couple of weeks......

Whilst no expert on corportate finance,  what I was asking was whether it was now pointless to take part in the votes concerning the concessionary shares,  because any result might be invalidated were a bid for P&O (rather than a merger) to be the final outcome.   I imagine that Will in his reply was following my line of thought. But in the same vein,  surely (apart from at redemption) preference shares might (for whatever reason -  scarcity,  accrued advantages etc) be subject to market forces and therefore rise or fall from their nominal values.....?

Thanks Will! What is so frustrating is that most of us shareholders (I would imagine) bought the shares not to make a fast buck,  but to benefit from the concessionary fares.  P&O have let us down badly by managing to mismanage (if you see what I mean) the whole Channel operation so badly;  I would far prefer someone to take over,  leave the concessionary share scheme as it is,  and then run the operation efficiently for the benefit of passengers and staff alike. Can't see that happening though.....

Yesterday's 6.00 pm Radio 4 News said that P&O shares (the ords presumably) had jumped on news that P&O might become the subject of a bidding war. Does this mean that we should put on hold sending back the voting papers for Concessionary Shares?   ie if someone else launches a proper bid (rather than the merger as presently planned) do the concessionary share elections become invalid?

@ Teamedup - precisely why I said I respected any reason the original poster might have for not wanting UK originated television. In our case we are daily watchers of French TV when we are at home in Devon,  and have been since 1999.  My wife's French has largely improved from very basic as a result of watching "Les Feux de l'Amour" on TF1 with the subtitles activated;  (dreadful show but brilliant for picking up useful phrases and simple conversational grammar)..   We watch both the TF1 Journals de 13.00 and 20.00 pretty much every day,  which whilst editorially pretty dodgy give a very good impression of daily French life. I would not dream of forcing anyone to have UK television if they don't want it.   But at the same time I was merely trying to be helpful, as there may still be people who are not aware that it is now so simple (ie not in Sky's control anymore) to watch the BBC and ITV.   I'm sorry that my efforts have been interpreted ini any other light.

Whilst respecting any reason you may have for not having TV from the UK,  we on the satellite section of LF forums would be delighted to advise you;  it really is very easy and cheap to get access to the BBC and ITV,  probably less than €120 if you can put up the dish yourself.   AND you get excellent radio reception thrown in.

Couldn't do any harm could it to try Bappel  (Rene) Corgnac sur l'Isle 05 53 55 21 77 I've never used him myself,  but he's got a biggish shop at Corgnac and does satellite (TPS) installations.  Even if he can't help maybe he would kniow who to contact,  I'm fairly sure he does do some repairs in house.....

Judging by some of the (sporadic) adverse comments about the Tiscali service over the years on this forum maybe they reckon the only way of getting any feedback IS indeed by snail mail.....

Anton - it's a question (mainly) of the video polarity (and hence all the sync/frame pulses) that is different with system L (also the sound is AM but that's not so bad to sort out) When you select "SECAM France" on your TV I daresay it simply assumes you want system L and acts accordingly,  and that when you choose PAL it scans the bands on the basis of systems B/G/H/I and fine tunes the sound accordingly when it finds a carrier.   After all the manufacturers don't want to be blinding the customer with science! But I cannot over-emphasise the fact that explaining away the differences between France and UK TV as simply a problem of SECAM v PAL is sloppy nomenclature (*) and is likely to lead to problems;  specifically because there are plenty of SECAM sets around on the market which will NOT work on system L and therefore are useless in France if you want to watch French TV direct from an aerial.   They'd be fine if you fed them a SECAM signal via Scart but simply cannot lock onto the French UHF (and VHF) TV systems because the sync pulses are the wrong way up. Try it with a UK b/w only set if you can find one;  the most you will get is a negative image,  but with a bar down the middle of the picture and the left half of the scene on the right and the right on the left,  and that's if you're lucky;  it'll be very unstable and rolling horizontally all over the place. You could of course argue that I am nitpicking, but it IS the basis science and I feel it important to distinguish the transmission system from the colour system in this context to avoid people bringing over UK sets with Secam compatible Scarts that then won't work on system L via the aerial And your Bluesky TV was - I'll be bound - purchased in France and will by definition work on L/SECAM and most likely on everything else without being guided because many French people near their foreign borders put up aerials for cross-frontier (mainly B/G Pal) reception.   This  same universality does not apply to all UK sets,  although Philips in this respect are good. (*) - sorry I realise that sounds rather rude,  particularly as the manufacturers are guilty of the same simplified thinking.  Please don't take it as a personal dig,  it isn't meant to be!

I'm beginning to sound like a cracked record on this subject,  but the colour system (whilst important) is secondary (for the purposes of off air reception) to the transmission standard. Unless your card is "automatic" in some way,  you need to tell it to look for system L transmissions with SECAM colour for use in France.   In the UK it was using system I with PAL colour. Get the system right and the rest should follow,  should follow,  should follow,  should follow......

Sorry you had such a bad experience,  but you've just reminded me why I haven't travelled with BF for over five years now.  Of course they want their boats full,  it makes them more money, and as long as no-one falls overboard I expect they're happy. Sorry to sound so cynical,  but living in Devon and seeing how all their fares now amount to licensed banditry (and being forced to travel via Dover as a result) hardly makes me BF's greatest fan.   The rot set in when they stopped publishing their fare structures;  I stopped using them soon after that.

I think PAS probably needs a 1.5 m dish minimum.  Wasn't sure what size yours is. I only asked about it because our friends would like SABC but don't want to shell out for that size of dish unless there's a certainty that it will work (and I don't relish setting it up much!).

The confusion often arises from the general application of "free" & "digi" to all sorts of broadcast receiving material.  The providers of the services in question do not assist in this matter,  freesatfromsky,  freeview,  freesat,  digibox,  etc etc. So no-one can be blamed for the misunderstandings that inevitably arise! Happy New Year!

@ Fridgeman,  well Will's summary makes a good starting point for those new to the subject and saves a lot of general explanation;  but of course you are right things do move on gradually. I'm interested to know whether you can get the Africa/Europe beam on PAS 10 at 68.5 deg E.   I ask because some friends of ours in 24 who lived in S Africa for many years would love to watch the offerings there.  I believe it's on the very edge of possibility due to the fact it's virtually on the horizon as viewed from the UK or 24,  and all sorts of unexpected effects come into play as a result.  Do you get it?