Quillan

Well I picked up my sound bar this morning and got it plugged in (quite simple just two wires) and have been trying it out on recordings I know I had problems with before.   One program I had a problem with was Transporter: The series, episode 3 (The Switch) with the scene set in an art exhibition which is more like a disco and you could never hear the characters talking because the music appeared to drown them out, now I can hear everything they say. So clearly having a central speaker works for voice.   No mucking about with a setup etc. The Samsung found the sound bar immediately it was turned on and turned off the TV speakers automatically and transferred the volume buttons to the sound bar. If I turn off the sound bar it reverts back to the TV speakers automatically. It also works fine with my mobile phone and tablet for playing music as it connects via Bluetooth although I probably won't be using it much for that.   Definitely a major improvement on the TV speakers and even better gets a gold star from Mrs 'Q' who was also suffering from the same problem as Chancer and myself. Mrs 'Q' also like The Expendables series of films as she also does the Die Hard ones and the dialog is much better in both especially in the action scenes. That said if we could have 'saved' our old Philips TV which has given excellent service for 20 odd years I would have stuck with that. I do think these modern LCD TV's are sold on the basis that you need to buy an external sound system for them if you want decent sound and that they should not be so preoccupied in making them so thin then they could have stuck bette speakers in them. I think that's backed up by the shops. When you go to places like Darty the only ones they have setup that you can listen to the sound on have external AV units with speakers. You can't play with the ones on display because they lock up all the remote controls.

[quote user="You can call me Betty"]Mr Betty bought a sound bar. I watch a different telly, and I use the volume control. It's a man thing. If in doubt, buy another gadget,?[/quote]   Well not really in this case because you need to understand the technology. Before we all went digital you got sound in just stereo or if you had a Sky box (back then) in Dolby Analog even though films were being recorded in Dolby Digital 5.1 (and the revised Dolby Plus) or DTS. Now we can recieve digital sound through our normal TV's it has become a problem because the TV's are not designed to have 6 or even 8 (Dolby Digital 7.1) speakers. With game shows and older TV programs it isn't a problem, same with adverts which is why they sound louder than films and more modern TV series.   Very basically they record normally in DTS or more likely SDDS, from five or seven placed microphones. Just to keep it simple we will talk about 5.1 and 4 microphones are placed left and right of the action at 90 deg to the actors and another 2 placed left and right but further away. They are placed at very specific distances from  what is being recorded (you can search for the exact distances if you want) and microphone number 5 is the one which is placed over the actors to record their speech. The .1 as in 5.1 refers to the enhanced base unit which also gives the feeling of vibration. Thats why when there are battle scenes you 'feel' the guns going off etc.   Your TV speakers can't repoduce 5.1 although they can trick you a little but the main factor is there is no central speaker to pick up the speech properly, that channel is mixed in with left and right. More expensive TV's do sometimes come with a central speaker. This is why you need a sound bar which typically mixes left and right back with left and right front and seperates out the central speech speaker as it has one in the middle at the front. It also comes with the base unit.   Some sound bars do have the back left and right speakers and they 'throw' the sound to the back of the room but these ones tend to be rather expensive even though they are a substitute for a full blow home audio system with speakers dotted around the room which gives the ultimate audio experience.   When you get to the 7.1 systems they add a further two speakers to the left and right of where you sit giving you an enhanced feeling of being right in the centre of the film and are more likely used with 3D films.   The difference between Dolby Digital DTS and SDDS is that Dolby digital packs all the audio into one or two streams (AC3) and in your home you have to unpack it and send it to the respective speaker. DTS and SDDS actualy put the individual sound channels on the disk so you don't have to seperate them out which takes up more space (hence using Blue Ray which is not just for the space requird for the film resolution) but the quality of the audio is much better because the frequency range is much wider as it is lost a bit with the Dolby system.   So if you watch a lot of films and more modern TV series you need at least a sound bar to get over the voice problem because you need that extra central speaker for without it you will always have a lower speech volume because the TV can't seprate out the speech. Even better if you can afford it buy a full on AV system with 5.1 or 7.1 so you can listen as the film makers intended.

I did a really good post explaining why but then it got deleted by accident but it is all to do with Dolby 5.1 and DTS used in films and modern TV series in that speech comes out the special central speaker and not out of the left and right ones. You need to buy a sound bar. I did a load of research on this and am collecting a PHILIPS - HTL5140B/12 - Barre de son today which has very good reviews and comes in at €255. Considering you can pay anything from €150 to €2k for one this was a reasonable price I thought. I will let you know how I get on. Nick is right the speaker quality in these things is OK but very limited due to the TV's being so thin, you just can't get decent speakers inside them. You may also find it improves a little if the TV is against a flat wall. It should tell you in the destructions where to place it and I have noticed just moving it towards and away from the wall does make a difference to the sound although it does not fix this particular problem.

[quote user="gardengirl "]Those who read and give papers on their specialities regularly do so in English; it's not a matter of preference, it's required.[/quote]   I wanted to find out if this is true or an urban myth and this is what I discovered.   Normally a paper is first written in the language of the country of origin. If the paper is also aimed at the international audience then it will be translated into English. Indeed I noticed that there are many specialised companies advertising on the web who will do this. You can also find one person referencing another’s work where the other persons work is not in English, I read that there has been some debate amongst the academia on if it is right to reference as the original language or to get it translated.   So whilst on the International ‘stage’ the preference is to publish in English around 15% of papers are published in another language (that being of the language of the author). In other words there is no requirement to publish in English but if you want to reach a larger international audience it would be wise to get your paper translated into English. Interestingly, as an example, China only publishes in Chinese.

[quote user="lindal1000"]Like I said, it is a requirement for all health care staff now to understand English.[/quote]   Not in SW France and that includes the students nurses and those newly qualified. I would love to know where this comes from as in an official government document because it would save me money on a translator and I could wave it under their noses and demand (as so many English expats currently do) that they speak English to my wife and I. Somehow I doubt anyone will be able to provide that however as there is no mention of it on the French Government website (http://www.sante.gouv.fr/infirmier,10821.html). [:D]

[quote user="gardengirl "]<> ALBF, this is exactly the opposite of what we have found, as I said in my post yesterday.[/quote]   I agree but I also think there is an assumption that all doctors speak some English which is not true, certainly in SW France. Very few medical staff speak English (and why should they!) because the prominent second language down here is Spanish followed by Catalan. You will be very lucky to find a nurse who speaks English. Indeed up until 5 or so years ago when English became madatory in schools as a second language most kids perfered to learn Spanish. My comments about French hospitals are based on extensive visits (like two or three a month) over the last 18 to 20 months at places like Toulouse, Carcassonne, Limoux, Montpellier and Beziers. Although we both have conversational French technical hospital stuff is way to complicated for us so we pay for a profesional translator to come with us. Something the UK could do rather than supply them FOC via the NHS at £80 an hour including travel (probably gone up now). I was told by one specialist that the French government has a whole department that translates scientific and medical research documents into French and it is quite efficient translating stuff in a matter of a few weeks. Drug companies have to supply documentation in French anyway if they want to get their drugs accepted in France.

On the notaire's website there are reports that give information on basic trends. I did once come across a more detailed report by department on thier website but I can't find it. It's not historical data, just the trend since the last report. Unfortunatly the last three or four show a downwards trend in prices.

[quote user="JohnFB"]Quillan On pension income CSG is 6.6% and CRDS is 0.5% giving 7.1%. On interest income it is in total 15.5%. There is a reduced rate of social charges if your revenue de reference is below a certain threshold, tho i do not have details of that to hand. All the above apply if you do not have a an S1. OP If you pay the reduced rate i do not know what is deductible from the following years income, but it will be shown on your avis d'impot. rgdsJFB [/quote]   I was under the impression, obviously incorrectly, that this was only true if you were at state retirement age and not if you retired early and did not have an S1. Once you reach state retirement age you then pay a reduced rate unless you have an S1 in which case you pay nothing because, in this case, your social contribution is paid by the UK and you can't pay twice. Bit like double taxation and why so many are claiming it back from the French government as per the other thread.

From how I understand from the thread on claiming back these charges I would think that given your ages and that you have not reached the statory retirement age and do not hold an S1 (meaning the UK is not paying for your healthcare) then it is the full amount (15.5% or there abouts) when it comes to social charges.   With regards to the pension it is my understanding and confirmed by my local Imports that you will pay 7.5% tax on the income although I am not sure what happens about the tax free lump sum under the UK system. What I do know is that I have taken my whole pension pot out of the UK, was charge 40% tax in the UK which I am within days of getting back in the form of a cheque from HMRC and will then have to pay 7.5% tax on in France. I do know how the UK work out the tax on the lump sum which is because I have no other income from the UK is multiplied by 52 because it was taken in one 'week' then tax and UK personal tax allowance applied. If you didn't claim back the tax then at the end of the year they will recalculate it bringing it back down to whatever tax band you would really fall in and you get a refund that way. However I am much better off paying the 7.5% in France and holding an S1 will not be paying social charges because of the reasons laid out in the other thread.

Well being a little younger than you it is something that I think about from time to time. My thoughts are that energy costs will increase as will probably the cost of such things as water. Thinking about that do I really want to see my money being spent on all this and is there anything I can do? My conclusion has been that whilst it would be nice to live in a character property it's going to cost me and those costs are going to rise taking an ever bigger chunk out of my pension.   Some time back there was a thread on the forum about the new(ish) regulations apertaining to new builds and how they have got closer to a basic 'passive' home where little energy is required to keep you warm in the winter because of the insulation required and the ability to recover heat from air circulated through the house from the outside. The technology behind this is now well established and prices have dropped considerably from the early days. That coupled with recycling water for certain things, low energy LED lighting, geothermal heating (much cheaper to install during a build), solar water heating and possibly solar electricity or even a wind generator all come to mind. All a little more cost initially but the day to day living costs would be significantly lower than living in a nice character property. My decision would therefore tend to lean quite heavily towards a new build embracing all this technology be it timber framed or more traditional (block) type build because I simply don't want to be handing over my pension to somebody else just to keep warm in the winter etc. Alternatively of course you could move out of France to a warmer climate although I feel I have a medium understanding of France and I quite like it here.

The comteur just has contacts so there is a live in and a live out to the 2A breaker then on to the J/N device. So you want two wires out (you can remove the plate covering the contactor connections, there should be no seal and it is on the consumer side) each to a 2A breaker then on to the respective J/N device. I guess the box is pre-wired anyway so I guess it makes it a lot easier and cuts down on time plus it is probably only a few Euros more than buying all the bits on their own so probably the best way to go. Don't forget to mark up which one is for which tank. Good luck.

The rules are quite clear on Table D'hote in that your guests get what you decided to eat that night. You cannot offer any form of choice, you can't sit them at separate tables, you have to all sit at the same table including the host. Any variance on this makes you a restaurant and not only do you require the appropriate licence but you must abide by the regulations applicable to restaurants and can have a surprise inspection at any time. Not to mention you need a separate kitchen and everything used by the guests must be separate from yours i.e. plates, knives, glasses etc, etc. It does of course all go back to the origins of CdH and TdH.   Idun is right, basically they either eat what you are eating or don't eat at all and go out to eat. If we have vegetarians then we cook a vegetarian meal for everyone. If we have people with gluten problems everyone eats sans gluten. There are many excellent substitutes you can use and my experience is that 99% of the 'normal' people don't even know they are eating a sans gluten meal. Those with the gluten problem simply don't eat the bread although can now get very good sans gluten bread which again you would never know it was sans gluten. Nuts is not a problem because we don't use them. You just have to be careful when you buy as it is quite amazing what has gluten and/or nuts in when it comes to 'normal' food.   With the current increase in problems between hotels and CdH it pays to be even more careful when it comes to sticking to the rules. At least two CdH's near us have been 'done' and they have been denounced by a certain hotelier who happens to also be the mayor of our nearest town.

I am wondering why you have replied to three old threads all in a matter of 30 minutes and within an hour of joining? Just so you know Google and other search engines don't pick up on URL's in signatures on this forum, it's set specifically not to allow that.

I just went down to turn off one of my rooms for winter and checked. The setup is as we agreed except the breakers for the heaters are all 16A. Might save you a Euro or three on the cost for installing the new heater.

What I meant was you don't need a second 2A breaker to power the J/N device. However you are right, you need two J/N devices, one 2A breaker and two 20A breakers making five. Sorry about that, seem to have lost the ability to count. I think the next size up in boxes is six but it's not that much more.

Yes you can use the same J/N unit. Handy in a way that you have mini tableau for the heating because you can just replace it with another. If you think about it you only want a 4 way tableau to take the J/N unit, 2A breaker and two 20A breakers. The tableau's are basically all the same and have the same rail inside. You may have to buy the rail, earth strip, live and neutral bus separately but you can get a 4 way tableau from BricDepot for €16.95 with a cover or a Legrand one with no cover for €8.40. If you swap the contents over then you will just need to get an extra 20A breaker. I think you can get all the bits for about 30 Euros.   Don't forget your safety when you do this. Basically switch the house off with the main EDF breaker before removing any tableau covers. Don't want your other half coming on here having a go because you didn't and ending up brown bread. Mind you you can always do what I do, get the MIL to do it with both feet in buckets of water and a metal screwdriver. [6]

http://www.moustikit.com/pieces-moustikit-enroulable/73-toile-moustikit-enroulable-3391920050167.html   If you live near a Leroy Merlin or might be going near one you can get them from them as well but they cost 25 Euros.   http://www.leroymerlin.fr/v3/p/produits/rouleau-de-toile-de-moustiquaire-en-fibre-de-verre-grise-235x150-cm-e42547   It is all down to postrage really.   Be aware that each brand uses a different fixing into the pull down bar, some are round and others are not, you need the right one.

Just in case anyone else has the same problem you can buy a kit for 19,99 Euros which is a new sprung roller for the top, netting with special plastic/rubber bit at the bottom to slide into the pull down bit. The kist can be cut to your specific size by you when you fit it. Much better than paying between 60 and 100 Euros for a new pull down screen. The same kit is available at Leroy Merlin but it is more expensive.

Not what you want to hear but you have to lay in a new circuit with another breaker. The current across the two for a start will be as follows.   2300W/220V - 10.45A plus the new one (2000W/220V = 9.09A) will be 19.54A at the breaker. Given that even more current it drawn the instance the heater coil is switched on I think firstly your running to close to the limit and on switch on the breaker will trip as both will come on together.   The other issue is the 2.5mm solid cable which is rated at 20A or 4.6kw. It will get warm with both heaters running at the same time and running it in trunking/conduit will not let the heat dissipate properly.   Then there is insurance if something does go wrong, you will probably not be covered because French regs say each heater must be fed with its own cable and breaker.   Personally I would also use a second Jour/Nuit unit as well although I doubt you will have to install a 2A breaker to power it. You should be able to work it out from the following.   http://www.installation-renovation-electrique.com/schema-electrique-chauffe-eau/   I have five tanks, one for each bedroom (I have a B&B with four bedrooms) and one for the rest of the house. Each is on its own circuit with its own breaker and its own Jour/Nuit breaker the latter has a single 2A breaker for all five and it works with no problem.   PS - You can use three core 2.5mm solid core cable just clipped with no conduit to power the heater without a problem which makes it easier to install.  

A 'Stronger amplifier' is not always the answer, if it were we could have all added one to our dishes when they changed satellites and not have had to spend so much replacing them.   A very simplistic way of describing the problem is that if you think back to radio. If you had a portable one with a pull out arial and you didn't pull the aerial out enough you could still hear the radio but there would be a lot of hissing etc. Pull the aerial out fully and the hissing would disappear. The hissing we can call noise but the radio signal is still being transmitted at the same power. We can think of this as signal to noise ratio, the quality of the signal v the power. This is an extremely basic description of what is happening and whilst not totally correct is designed to give you a very rough idea. The quality of your decoder, LNB and size of dish are so important and any one can affect reception. Even worse with digital TV because the 'noise' can been seen as distorted or missing pixels on the screen often resulting in complete loss of picture. This is why whilst the power level is important the signal quality is even more important and the example I have given is designed to show you that you can have plenty of power (strength) but little or not enough signal quality for the decoder to get a 'lock'.   The Sky boxes only use one channel to indicate power and quality where as a Humax box does it for each transponder based on the channel you are watching. You can think of a transponder as being a tiny aerial on the satellite of which there are many and each transponder transmits six (if memory serves) TV channels. Some transponders transmit better than others hence you can get some channels from one satellite but not others from the same satellite and they ones you can't get normally are all on the same transponder.   So will the Humax box be better, well normally yes but then that depends who made your Sky box (Pace, Amstrad etc). Pioneer used to make them and were reputed to have been the best when it came to signal to noise but they don't make them anymore neither do Pace. I can tell you from experience that the Humax box is better than the old Amstrad Sky box (not the Sky+ box because I never tried one). It really boils down to the 'chip set' the box manufacturer uses.   The most obvious thing of course is do our Sky boxes work, can you test them in the UK either at home or round a mates house, do you know a fellow Brit locally in France who has UK TV that you could try your boxes on their dish? My gut feeling is it is the dish not aligned properly, could be to small or possibly an LNB that does not separate out the signal from the noise very well. The more you pay for an LNB the better it should be although when looking at the spec of the LNB you don't just want to look at the noise DB but the temperature range it holds that measurement over. The LNB I use holds the same reading over a very big temperature range, much bigger than a cheap one but then it cost just under £100 but I get massive changes in temperature where I live down in southern France near the Spanish border.   So why all this grief if it seems you can stick any old dish up in the UK, point it in roughly the right direction and get a perfect picture. Well that is because the 'beam' is aimed at the UK and is designed to work with a maximum dish size of 60cm. Of course in reality we know you can be outside the UK and use a big dish (up to 3m in Spain) and get a picture but Sky say officially this should not work and will not help you if you are outside the UK.   If aligning the dish proves to be a problem then I would suggest you get a technition in to do it for you. Whilst it may cost between 50 to 80 Euros it could save you a lot of grief plus he can test the LNB. He can also tell you if you have the right size dish. Don't forget also that the signal varies quite a bit from one area to another and it is not unheard of that somebody can get an excellent picture with say a 80cm dish yet 10km down the road people struggle with a 120cm dish.   I tried to make it pretty basic for you to understand, some may argue too basic I suspect so best of luck.

[quote user="andyh4"]Q I know you love your big dishes and that this has certainly solved your problems in the deep south, but really a 90cm dish in Cote d'Or strikes me as overkill. I am over 200km further south and can happily pick up in all but the most extreme conditions with 60cm dishes. Lingone 60% quality is at the limit for picking up some stations and HD stations may not get through to the TV.[/quote]   My point being is that there is only a couple of Euros difference in price these days between 80 and 90cm dishes.

You will probably find a 90cm dish is the best for your area for a start. You might be OK using one of these cheap meters, either the analog or LED types. The dish needs to be of good quality as well. The analog and LED meters only look at signal strength and not quality although in the UK, where the beam is aimed there should not be a problem but the further south you go the pairing of strength to quality tends to part company unless you have a big dish. With cheaper dishes (and I speak from experience although I am not an installer) focal length i.e. moving the LNB back and forwards to the dish can make a difference as can where it points on the dish. Cheaper dishes do not always point the LNB at the exact focal point and tilting up and down or moving from side to side can make a difference. As you correctly say the skew can make a big difference to quality. Make sure there is nothing in line of sight and that the LNB is of reasonable quality and not to long a run on the cable with no joints. The Black Ultra LNB is pretty good especially up where you are and holds its quality through a range of temperatures which the cheaper ones don't always do and it is just a few Euros more in price. I personally tend to get a specialist in to set mine up but then I am much further south than you, have a much bigger dish and am in an area where the signal is known to be difficult.

It may not make a difference but it worth removing the cards from the Sky boxes and trying again. If you are using them for FTA (Free to Air) and not a Sky subscription the only difference they make is to set the first BBC channel to the region from where the card came from for local news. It would be nice to know what 'non Sky' box you used. It is not so much the strength as signal quality that is important.

Most of our breakers are Legrand. I put an outside 16A socket on the wall to run a caravan and used a cheap box from BricoDepot and a 16A breaker with a residual current breaker (or whatever it is called) in the box as well, mainly because it is a caravan and made of metal so it seemed logical to me to do it this way. Anyway I noticed a smell from the box so powered it off and checked the breaker and it had melted all down one side exposing the 'mechanics' within. Replaced it with a Legrand breaker and no problem since. When new circuits were added to the house I have always installed Legrand breakers because that is what all the others are. My electrician who checks my work, installs the breaker and connects it up swears by Legrand. Incidentally the cheaper breakers don't fit my old box because of they way the bus is connected so that's another reason I don't use them. Also Legrand have a sliding lock onto the rail at the front and back that makes them easier to replace.

[quote user="Théière"][quote user="Loiseau"]Simpler still.... My recent replacement dishwasher and washing machine came with the standard plug rather than the bigger one that their predecessors had had. Therefore they were not going to fit Into the bigger sockets that were in place. The installer said On no account to cut off the plug to replace it with the larger one (would invalidate guarantee), but to buy a step-down adapter which would enable new, smaller plug to go into old, larger socket. A quick trip to my local Weldom and a rummage through the electrical bits, and that was sorted. Angela[/quote] Should be re titled "More dangerous still" [:)] As Quillan said you must down rate the fuse at the board or breaker if fitted. [/quote]   Generally I don't bother saying anything more now because I am always wrong. Yes you should change the socket and downgrade the breaker rather than use one of these adapters (which is why you have to search for them in shops) which will probably be a 20A one and needs to be 16A. The only thing we have ever had without a plug is our big cooker which had to be hard wired in to a 20A breaker. You can buy a breaker from most Brico 'sheds' and if you feel you don't want to touch the consumer unit get an electrician in to do it for you, give him the breaker and it should not cost you much to change it as it only takes about 5 minutes or less even. Have a look first before you buy so the one you buy looks the same. Even better if it is a branded one try to buy the same brand. The cheap ones sold by BricoDepot are OK but a friendly electrician I know told me they can melt a bit if a constant high current is passed through them and I have seen this with my own eyes as well (you learn from experience).