New to the site -- greetings from an American

[Shaps]

Hello, all.  Just found this site, and boy does it look like it'll be a godsend.  Moving to Paris in a few months from the States, and I've got plenty of questions about TV/internet (and I'm sure to be on other forums here as well).  It seems that most people here are Brits -- are there Americans on this site who might be able to help me with US-specific questions?

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

I'm a Brit who's lived in France but lives in America now (for the past 2 months). I might be able to help, but there's stacks of people on here who will be able to help too.

[Martin963]

Well we'll be happy to help as best we can,  given our "British" background.

I'm rather hoping you'll bring over lots of 525 line system M NTSC receivers to France and we can marvel at how they don't work on 625 line system L SECAM!

I wonder what DTT system the USA uses.....(and how many lines it produces when viewed on conventional equipment).

[Christine Animal]

Apparently there are about 50,000 of you in Paris, so you won't be alone!

The American Community in Paris

I'm sure everyone on here will do all they can to help you though.  Welcome to the forum Shaps.   [:)]

Whereabouts in Paris are you going to live?

 

[woolybanana]

OOOhhhh, Mercans - ah just love them. Welcome to the cradle of European civilization!

[Shaps]

Thanks, all for the warm welcome. Despite being relatively young (33) and having an engineering background, I've ended up somewhat of a Luddite and consumer electronics technophobe, so my questions may be somewhat elementary, and may not need an American at all.

Two main questions, really, at this point:

The first is to what you wrote, Martin (how did you guess?).  My understanding is that the US TV standard is NTSC and the French standard is SECAM.  Does that mean there's no way to use a US TV in France even if it can take 240V/50Hz power?  I heard through the grapevine that if a US TV has an HDMI input, then it can be connected to the French TV "box" that comes with a TV/internet/phone bundle through Free or Bouygues or Orange and work fine.  Is that the case, and if so, does it limit the channels I can watch or have any other problems/issues associated with it?   I can't imagine this hasn't been discussed before on this forum, but my searching skills apparently aren't up to muster.

My second question is about accessing websites that require US IP addresses.  It seems as though Expat Shield does the trick if you need a UK IP address, and the only comparable tool I'm aware of for Americans (we're not all that bad, really!) is Hotspot Shield, but that gets very mixed reviews and there seems to be some question of whether or not it actually works any more (at least based on what I was able to find).  Ideally I'd love to be able to stream a site like Netflix, for example.  Are there other ways to do this other than IP shields?

A little more detail about me and the move as part of my introduction here.  My wife and I currently life in Baltimore, Maryland, about 45 mins north of Washington, DC.  The reason for our move is that my wife has accepted a job with the Lycee International in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just west of Paris, though we'd both been itching to move to Europe for some time so this had been our game plan for a while.  We'll probably try to live out in Saint-Germain so she's close to school, and since it's on the RER, it shouldn't be too bad for me to train into the city.  I'm still looking for a job (I work in investment management), but may be able to work remotely for my current firm.  No kids, but we do have a dog that gets treated as a child.  In fact, I think my wife did all the research to make sure he (the dog) could move over with her before she thought at all about if I could move over.

Thanks for any and all advice!

[ericd]

When you have moved and take your dog on a walk for his/her business, make sure you clean the mess after..........You might start a trend [I]

[Quillan]

HDMI is not a problem, anything that produces HDMI (satellite decoders French terrestrial digital HD receivers etc) will work with your TV, its a world wide format. What you won't be able to see is analog terrestrial TV but then thats old hat and won't exists in France in a few years time (some turn off this year). So if your company is paying to ship your goods then bring the TV, in fact anything that will operate on 220V you can bring. Don't get a 220/110 transformer for 110V equipment, its really not worth it and a friend I know who had one and it went bang had a lot of trouble getting a replacement once here in France.

You lucky in Paris, the minimum bandwidth will be 10mb but mostly it's 20mb and I believe some areas are offering 100mb (optical cable) depending how near to the centre of Paris you are.

If your French is not that good try Orange as they have a dedicated sales and help-desk number. Because of the speed you will be able to have TV without a dish through the Internet and there is the option to see programs in their original language (House, NCIS, films etc) all for around 40 Euros per moth which will include free phone calls to the US (including US mobiles) and there is no time limit. All your French calls will be free as will over 90 other countries but with the exception of the US and Canada you will have to pay to call mobile phones. You can now pay 3 Euros extra and get unlimited free calls to French mobiles as well, have a look at www.orange.fr to see all their offers. Download the Google toolbar if you want, it translates French web-pages 'on the fly' and is available for most browsers.

One tip, if you bring an American desktop computer bring a spare keyboard. American keyboards are different to UK ones and both are very different to French ones.

[Martin963]

Well I have to say that I'm not entirely sure.....but:

SECAM and NTSC and PAL (strictly speaking L-SECAM and M-NTSC) are analogue standards.    The single letter denotes the TV system,  including such parameters as number of lines (eg 625/525/819),  polarity of video modulation,  sound offset,  sound transmission system, etc.    The SECAM/NTSC/PAL refers to the "added on" colour system.

Unless an analogue TV is truly multistandard it won't cope with all these subtleties;   that said an awful lot of modern sets with analogue tuners do now work throughout Europe,  but I don't think they cope with American 525 lines off an aerial,   although they may well play back DVDs or videos.    I imagine the same applies in reverse,   ie an American TV won't work on analogue TV over here unless it's very specialised.

But analogue as we all know has days that are numbered,    and rather than talking about lines we often talk about "resolutions" as far as flat screen TVs are concerned.   So we might have 720 x 540 for SD and 1080 x 720 for HD.  And for this - as you say - an HDMi input should (one would think) be international.

But what I don't know is whether the frame rate (30 fps in USA,  25 over here,   or 60 interlaced and 50 respectively) is a problem.   My guess is that HDMi is just like VGA,  in that any "monitor" will cope with various resolutions and various frame rates.

So - having rambled somewhat - my guess is that an American TV with HDMI sockets should work fine on a box getting TV off the internet,   and indeed I'd guess that it would work with a French TNT (French Terrestrial Digital TV) or TNTsat box,  provided the hook up was via HDMi,   (which in the latter TNT instance probably means getting a High Definition TNT box).

But I'd hesitate about bringing anything else (ie no HDMi) with me due to the freight costs and risks that it might not work.

And if anyone knows the answer for sure then I'd be happy to learn/stand corrected!

Laters - Quillan has the definite answer it seems and beat me to it too!

[pachapapa]

[quote user="Quillan"]

 (some turn off this year).

[/quote]

All will be turned off by Novembre this year; including the 5 analogue channels still being transmitted on Atlantic Bird 3.[;-)]

[Shaps]

Excellent!  Thanks for the replies and suggestions -- it sounds like the TV is not a problem.

Anyone have thoughts on how to access US websites/convert a French into a US IP address?

(And I always scoop after the dog on walks.  I'm happy to lead by example.)

[woolybanana]

Why not let the fertilizer lie where it is?

[Danny]

[quote user="Shaps"].

Anyone have thoughts on how to access US websites/convert a French into a US IP address?

[/quote]

you could try Hotspot Shield a free VPN service funded by ads which places your IP in the US.

(If you use Firefox with the adblock plus add-on, the ads are not shown)

Danny

[Pickles]

[quote user="Shaps"]it sounds like the TV is not a problem.[/quote]

I am prepared to bow to the superior knowledge of my colleagues, but having done a little digging around, it appears to me that HDMI is not necessarily a panacea. I have come across quite a few postings in which there is evidence of incompatibility between US and EU HDMI equipment, and it all seems to come back to the 50Hz vs 60Hz or 25fps vs 30fps signal rate. Again, in some cases it seems that the problem may be overcome by setting the set-top-box or Orange box or Neufbox output to a lower resolution, but you might want to check up on the specs for your specific TV. US-market Sony Bravias were mentioned in one thread.

Regards

Pickles

[Martin963]

Interesting Pickles,   and chimes with the aspect of the situation that was worrying me.

As I said at the outset,   I wasn't too sure.

With the price of stuff so *relatively* cheap there might be a lot to be said for starting from scratch by buying new once here.

[Shaps]

Hmm, good food for thought.  I'll see if I can figure out the specs of HDMI across the board, but I'd prefer not to lug a TV across the pond and just end up buying a new if unsatisfied with the picture.  Thanks for the info.

[cooperlola]

You could try Onspeed

http://www.onspeed.com/us/get.php?loc=US

instead of a conventional proxy server.  It works for me (as a way of getting into UK sites from France which otherwise I can't access).  Yes it requires a subscription but it's not much.