Advice please on best TV, Internet & Telephone for 7 Valleys area

[serhina]

We have just bought a house 15 mins from Hesdin and would be grateful for any advice on the best way to get basic French TV and also the best broadband / telephone provider (it would appear that the immediate locality is non degroupee).  .

[Danny]

For ADSL, the speed and availability depend on the location of the house and how far it is from the telephone exchange. If you already have a FT line you can go to this site http://www.degrouptest.com/ and enter the phone number. You will get a list of most of the offers available for broadband and telephone packages. If it is non degroupée, then you cannot get TV by ADSL. There are lots of options - read all the details carefully

If you don't have an FT line but you know the old telephone number you can normally check on most of the suppliers sites like Alice, Neuf, Free etc all the links on the degrouptest site.

For basic French TV, there are a few options. 

1 Analogue satellite - very cheap for dish and decoder, works fine for most folk who can't get a good reception by normal aerial.
2 TNT - french equivalent of freeview - digital channels through a normal aerial. You need a decoder - start very cheaply (some tvs have them aleady built in). This may or may not be available depending on the house location. Your aerial needs to be able to 'see' the appropiate local transmitter. See this thread for more info

That should get you started

Danny

[Danny]

PS Welcome to the forum.

[serhina]

Thanks for the welcome to the forum and for your advice and information, the links were very useful and confirmed that we are in a non degroupee area. As we have an FT phone already, I take it that the offer of unlimited calls to French fixed lines and some other fixed lines in Europe by various providers such as free and neuf telecom are not applicable in non degroupee areas.  Does anyone know if FT do unlimited calls to the UK for an additional monthly charge, I have not been able to find anything to that effect on their website, or indeed a telephone number for FT or Free that I can call from the UK.

I shall be talking to the neighbours to find out how effective an ordinary aerial is and take it from there.

Once again many thanks

Serhina

[Martin963]

Some ADSL operators (and to be favoured as a result) let you keep FT and have free calls.   Check out Alice,  we get free Europe landline calls via the Alice box,  and keep our FT line for emergencies.    And if you find the ADSL phone is 100% reliable you can opt to ditch FT later,  although where we are in la France profonde we prefer to keep FT as it's not unknown or infrequent for ADSL to stop working in the evening.

I'll look into your TV reception tomorrow,  it's too late tonight.

[Danny]

Serhina,

if you want to keep the FT line (as I and others have done) and have the benefit of free calls with your broadband, the cheapest is Free  followed by Alice

This works in a zone non degroupée too. You just won't get the television by ADSL

Neuf do a similar package but to have the free international calls, you have to give the FT line and that works for some people on this forum but if your modem goes wonky, you will have no telephone at all to make or receive calls. Don't forget that all these free calls are VOIP calls (over the internet) and in the event of problems with the adsl then keeping the FT line is like having insurance... It is up to you if you think it is worth 16 euros a month.

Like Martin,  I am happy with Alice. Apart from the odd calls to mobiles, I have had virtually no call charges for about 3 years now. I make a lot of calls to the UK and the US and Holland and other places... We had a problem with the ADSL at one time (with Club Internet) and it took two weeks to get it sorted but at least I could call them up to let them know.

There are other choices too. Orange offer all the same services but quite a bit more expensive. Teleconnect offer similar but a bit more expensive and you must keep your FT line with them but (useful for some people) everything is in English with them.

I am sure Martin will sort out your TV reception for you...

Danny

 

 

[Martin963]

re the TV

First,  have a look and see if the house you've bought came with an aerial (roof or attic).   If it did then the chances are that if you plug in an ordinary analogue TV bought in France you will have at least the three basic national channels (ie TF1,  France 2,  France 3).    If you try a set bought in the UK you *may* get reception,   but only if it is capable of switching from system I to system L and from PAL to SECAM colour.   If you still have the instruction book that will tell you if L/SECAM (the analogue terrestrial transmission standard used in France) is part of its specification.   (Otherwise they are not too expensive to buy in France - I've just purchased a little portable cathode ray tube 14 " with TNT integrated for €90,  and you did say "basic" didn't you!)

As to digital terrestrial TV,  well Hesdin itself is shown as not covered,  looking at the map it appears that that river valley doesn't do much for reception.   You can access the digital coverage maps for Abbeville and Lille (the two most likely candidates) from here

http://www.tnt-gratuite.fr/

click on the red marks near Bully les Mines and Abbeville and then on the orange bar that lets you look at the coverage maps.

However,  if you're away from that river valley I'd say you would have more of a chance,  although at that sort of distance from the transmitter(s) you will almost certainly need a good roof aerial delivering top-notch analogue pictures.   If you have a roof aerial already you need to establish which direction it's pointing,  as if it is pointing at a relay station that has not been upgraded to digital then it won't be any good for digital reception.   Again,  refer to that map on the site above,   if it's pointing at Abbeville (Limeux La Motte) or Bully Les Mines (Bouvigny) then you may be in luck.

If you don't have a roof aerial and the analogue option above hasn't worked,  I'd seriously consider the satellite route,  particularly if you have basic DIY skills.   The beauty of sat is that you don't need to put it on the roof,  as long as you can "see" the sky from SE to SW then a wall facing southish will do fine.   The simplest and cheapest option is analogue sat French TV from a sat called Atlantic Bird 3 which is just a smidge west of south,  and a dish and box can be had for €40 approx.   This will work until 2011 (but no longer),  the only drawback is that you need a SECAM capable TV set;   if you use a PAL only set from the UK then you will only see black and white pictures.    As stated above some UK TV's do handle SECAM nowadays.    This set up gets you TF1/F2/F3/Arte and F5 (sharing)/M6  and the bits of Canal + which aren't encrypted,  and is a good stop gap until full digital switch -ver,  at which point the terrestrial network coverage will be hugely improved by a combination of blistering power increases at the main stations and installation of digital transmitters at almost all the relays.

Digital sat is slightly more complicated as most of the French channels are scrambled.   I would suggest you look into the aerial option first,  and if that's a non-starter we'll go through the digital sat options later.    They allow you to get the 18 channels of basic digital TV,  but come at a higher price than the analogue altrenative.   Having said that,  I have gone down this route,  particularly as the sat box can be lugged back to Britain and used there to receive French TV (same can be said for analogue sat,  but with fewer channels).

Sorry that's a bit of a mouthful,  please come back if I make no sense whatsoever.

[serhina]

Thank you for all the info.  We are off to france tomorrow a.m. I have taken notes for on site research and will let you know how we get on when we get back after next week.  

Serhina

[serhina]

We spoke to the Mayor, the builder and others, apparently an aerial our locality is not very efficient,  we have invested in a digital kit (on offer in the local bricolage), we have arranged to have it fitted at the end of the month.  Hopefully we will be able to watch more than DVD's to improve our french.