Free French satellite TV?

[Richard Thomas]

Hi,

I

have recently moved to France with my French fiancee. The house we have bought

came with a satellite dish, but no box.

To

get French TV, is it possible to buy just a box and get the public channels for

free, or are we forced to enter into some kind of subscription with

TPS/CanalPlus? There is no aerial or other television receiving equipment on

the building.

Separately

from that, if there is a subscription, we think it would be better for us to

get a traditional aerial for the French TV, as we don't want all the extra

channels. That would mean that the satellite dish would be available for

receiving UK Freesat. Does anyone know whether the type of dish often found on

the side of a recent French house will work with Freesat (assuming it's

pointing in the correct direction and has the correct box attached)? We're

living near Calais, so the footprint issue won't be a problem.

Thanks

in advance

Rich

[Bob T]

The ffotprint is not a problem in the south of France so you are OK there. What you need for the UK channels is a Sky digibox and the dish pointing at 28 degrees east of south.

I have two dishes and two boxes, one is a French box and can pick up loads of European channels, including French ones, for free.

[Richard Thomas]

Thanks for that. Do you know if the dish on the side of the house would work with the Sky signal? Obviously you don't know the type of dish it is, but is the technology used by TPS/Canal+ the same as that used by Sky?

If we wanted to get a box without subscribing, could we get one in Carrefour, and if so, roughly how much would I be looking to spend?

Thanks again

Rich

[Bob T]

Just about any dish and LNB (the bit in the middle) will work with a sky digibox.

A French reciever can be either digital or analogue, go for the digital (numerique in French) and you will pay around 50 euro for the box alone.

[Pierre ZFP]

It doesn't matter much what dish you have or what LNB (the receiver bit at the dish end) as they are universal.  Obviously some are better than others in terms of sensitivity etc but these days the main channels are blasted out with so much signal you could probably cup your hand to your ear and get a signal!!  I have bought 2 Free to Air (FTA) boxes, one of them on 'special' at 30 euros and its brilliant.  The channels you get will depend on what service you subscribe to (I don't subscribe to any) and what sattelite you are pointing at.  In broad terms, Astra 2d is mostly English (including SKY subscription channels) Astra 1b is mostly German with some French and Hotbird is mostly French with some German.   Those are the main ones but there are around 28 sattelites that can be seen from Europe so you need to do a bit of research - just check the archives here on LFM

[Martin963]

Well it should in fact be said that it's  nearly always the same technology as far as the LNB is concerned.  But beware,  some older French LNB's are called "Telecom Band" - and if that is what you have got then it may cause you problems as the Intermediate frequency used is different to the two freqs used on "universal" LNB's.

At the moment you can get French public TV (ie France 2 3 4 5 Parliament Arte) digitally on Atlantic Bird 3 at 5 deg west.   This however is in all probability a temporary arrangement.   The public channels are scrambled on Hotbird and Astra 1 - an intolerable situation when compared to the BBC being free to air.  However....

You really need to find out what your dish is pointing at at the moment.  It may well be on AB3, as in rural areas this sat is often used in analogue mode for picking up France 5/M6 where coverage from the terrestial network is poor.   If that's were your dish is pointing (just west of due south) then a cheapo analogue box will get you the five main channels,  although you may find a UK TV displays them in black and white.  A French TV will be fine.

By the end of the year it should be possible to buy a card and box (reputedly for €60 ish) that will get you all the digital terrestrial channels - via digital satellite - and this will also probably be via AB3.   It's a one off payment.   So maybe you could wait until then if there's any doubt.....