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English VCR'S


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Hi,

We're about to move to France.  I've read about the problems with pal and secam so i'm going to buy tv's etc in France. My daughter has got quite a lot of videos still, would we have to have a vcr and tv thats pal in order to play them in colour. Is it quite easy to find a combined

pal and secam tv in France. Confusing! Also i've  heard that freeview boxes can work in my area as a neighbour is using one. Is this true?

Any help will be welcome. When i've sorted all this out I might be brave enough to look at sky!

Thanks Shelly.[*-)]

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You may or may not find a video player that will play your English VHS videos but remember that there are not too many around now, and even fewer combis, as everyone is switching over to DVD. If you have a UK VHS Video player, bring this with you and, providing it is connected by the scart lead, should work fine with a French TV.

Why not bring our English TV with you and use it for watching your videos and also, if you want to, to watch English TV by satelite.

Any English DVDs you own will work perfectly well in any French DVD player or combi.

I believe a UK "Freeview" box can be used in France to pickup the new French "TNT" digital service if it is available in your area. It won't be any use however for picking up any English channels.

If you want to watch English TV whilst in France then get hold of a Sky Digibox and 40cm dish before you leave the UK (ebay is a good place to pick one up cheaply) and bring it with you. Its fairly simple to install and set up yourself, just search through the numerous previous threads on this subject for information. You can get a receiver and dish over here but you'll probably find a UK Sky box easier to set up and you'll only be able to find ugly great 80cm dishes over here which are unnecessary. If you can live without Ch4&5, you won't need a viewing card but if you want these channels too then get a one-off payment viewing card from http://www.freesatfromsky.com/ before you leave the UK. Whatever you do, don't tell Sky you intend to use the card in France as this against their terms and conditions. You will need to activate the card whilst still in England which shouldn't be a problem.

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Hi,

Thanks for the information, it's very useful. i'll bring along a tv and video that we have and try it.  I've heard about the skycard, i'll do that . Do we have to set it up here before we leave? I heard that as long as you can give a Uk address you can order one. We've got a dish and box that we used to use already.

There's so much to think of when you're moving abroad!

Hope you're enjoying life out there!  We're moving to the Lot.

Shelly

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I took my old TV and VCR to our place in France and they worked fine for viewing Videos. Added an old DVD player and that worked fine too.

Old TV gave up the ghost and I bought a new one in France and everything works fine with that too.

I do not know much about satellite but there are plenty of professionals in that field who advertise in France/Living France

 

Andy

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We have a french TV (left by previous owner) an english video recorder, a french dvd player and an english skybox all connected by scart leads and have no problem watching whatever we want, french tv, english tv, french or english dvds and videos......all playing all singing all dancing.

Bob

 

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We used moving to France from Australia as an excellent excuse to "let go" of all those videos and move finally over to DVD, so I threw my video player away! The only electrical components we brought (well still bringing it's taken 6 months to get the stuff over on a boat and it still hasn't arrived) is my computer and surround sound system. Bought a cheap DVD player here and found the code to crack the region free thing as most of my dvds are region 4 so I can now play all my dvds (well I could if they were here).

As for videos I believe most video players and tvs play back both NTSC and PAL nowadays so I wouldn't imagine there's a problem. The only thing I found with a video in a foreign country is reception. My English video I took to Oz with me 8 years ago would receive sound but not picture or picture and no sound. I just used it as a playback machine via AV leads (don't have scart in Oz).

 

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