Potential Problem with French public-service TV on Atlantic Bird 3 digital

[Martin963]

That World Cup has got a lot to answer for....

It appears that France Televisions have been leant on to encrypt France 2 and 3 during the upcoming orgy of overpaid poseurs kicking a ball around in public for the next few weeks.

If you watch 2/3/5/Arte/LCP via a free to air box off AB3 then it may well be that 2 and 3 disappear fairly soon.   

It is presumed that other arrangements will be made for people with Fransat boxes (I damned well hope so as I have two) to keep their service running.   Ditto BIS.

It's not clear whether this is a temporary encryption,   but given that virtually EVERY terrestrial TNT transmitter is having its programme input racks modified to cope with the encryption (at not inconsiderable expense,  there are hundreds of sites now) it's likely to be something that doesn't ever go away in the long term even if this episode of coding is short-lived.

In addition,   Arte will shortly be replaced by France O on the free to air slot and will become invisible on an FTA box  (it's moving to one of the Newtec encrypted transponders)

To re-iterate,   it is likely that this will only affect folk with ordinary free to air boxes with a dish pointing at AB3 at 5 deg West;    if you have Fransat,  BIS,   Orange TV via sat,  or indeed ordinary terrestrial TNT reception then you won't notice any difference.

It really makes me cross that these oh-so-precious rights holders can hold broadcasters to ransom like this.

I would presume that France 2 and 3 analogue on AB3 will remain in the clear as there's no obvious way of encrypting them!

We were always warned that these feeds were not for public use,   but in the end the "attack" is coming from an unexpected quarter

http://groups.google.fr/group/fr.rec.tv.satellite/browse_thread/thread/8d56afdb3148b90d#

[AnOther]

Encrypted or not it can't end soon enough for me, and it hasn't even started yet [:'(]

Then of course it'll be the Olympics, yawn....................