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Sony Bravia KFL 20S2030


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I'm afraid I'm a very confused newbie. I have a Sony Bravia TV bought in the UK - the Specifications include the following:

TV System:

ANALOGUE depending on your country/region selection B/G/H, D/K, L, I

Digital: DVB-T

Colour/Video system

Analogue:cPAL, SECAM

NTSC 3.58, 4.43 (Only Video IN)

Digital: MPEG-2 MP@ML

does this mean I can use this TV in France? and get Freeview if I buy a satellite dish? and if so what sort of dish - couod I get one the uK on Ebay for example? I will worry about getting French programmes later or should I sort it now?

Thanks to all of you for being so understanding when faced by such technical incompetence!

MisterC
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No problems,  it is very confusing.

Yes your TV will work in France.   Specifically the mention of L and SECAM mean that it will work to pick up ANALOGUE French TV (from a roof aerial) and display it in colour!  However,   analogue TV is slowly disappearing,  so by Nov 2011 at the latest you will lose that part of the system.

It will also pick up standard definition French TNT  (television numerique terrestre) -  again using a roof aerial,  and assuming that your part of France has the necessary coverage.

It will also work with a digital satellite receiver which - if used with a dish pointing at Astra 2 at 28.2 deg E - will give you the free-to-air British channels,  including all channels from the BBC and ITV and ch 4 stables,   but only FIVE from that company  (not Fiver or Five USA).

It won't directly get "Freeview" unless you live in a very small area very close to the north coast of France and point your aerial at Britain.  "Freeview" is the name for the terrestrial British digital TV service,  whose coverage does not stray more than a few miles outside our borders,  being broadcast on frequencies that have quasi-optical limits (ie line of sight) to their coverage.    Many people (wrongly,  but it is silly nomenclature I concede) refer to free satellite British channels as Freeview.   What it really is in fact is transmission of various channels (including the BBC etc) free to air from a satellite.

A good investment (in Britain but to take to France) is a "freesat" receiver  which (somewhat like a Sky box) gives you an electronic programme guide and various other useful facilities.   However,   ANY digital satellite receiver can be used for the BBC/ITV etc,  including those purchased in france  (DVB-S or DVB-S2),   it's just that the general bog-standard boxes don't store the channels in a convenient order or update the channel list automatically.

You don't say where in France you are but a 60 cm dish is a sensible investment in most areas (rather than the 45 cms dish favoured by Sky,  although those will work in many instances) and 80 cms once you get south of a line from Bordeaux to Geneva.    A slight over-spec but it'll mean that heavy rain will not disrupt your viewing if you err on the side of too big.   You will also need a "universal" LNB.   You can get these dish and LNB in France for about €30.   You don't need to mount a dish on the roof,  it can be at ground level provided it has a clear view of the sky in a SE-SSE direction,  with no tall trees in the way.

Is your TV HD-ready?   (edit,  laters,  yes it seems to be)    If so you could get an HD-freesat box and enjoy BBC HD and ITV HD as well.   And purchasing a French TNT-HD box would allow you to watch several French channels in HD as well,   again provided that you have coverage,  which is more limited than the standard def TNT.     However,  as it stands you won't get TNT-HD direct on the Sony without an additional TNT-HD box.

Please post again if I haven't covered anything.

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Martin - Thanks for your very clear explanation, I am very grateful! Our house is in the Charente/Limousin/Dordogne borders north of Angouleme. Could you just clarify for me if the dish pointing at Astra 2 at 28.2 deg E is the same and pointing in the same direction as, the dish you mention further down your message as pointing in a SE-SSE direction.

Cheers
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Yes.    It's impossible to give you accurate directions,   but the Astra 2 cluster (with the British channels) is roughly SE in the sky. 

(All the broadcast satellites hang in a sort of rainbow shape with its feet ESE and WSW and centred at its apogee (is that the right word?) due south).

When a satellite is described as being at 28 deg E what it means is that the actual satellite is 22000 miles above the equator and positioned at a longditude of 28 deg E.   In this case it means that if the satellite fell to the ground vertically and instantaneously it would land in the Sudan (if I remember correctly,  somewhere round there anyway).  

Of course you near Angouleme have to take into account the fact that you are north of the equator and not quite on longditude 0 (ie the Greenwich meridian).   So Pythagoras and Euclid and a few other of those nightmare-figures from our schooldays come to our rescue to allow us (if so minded) to calculate the elevation and azimuth of our dishes.

There are websites (who have adequately mastered the intricacies of said Greek masters) that give all the angles you need at specific locations for specific satellites but to be honest any compass reading is likely to be influenced by the presence of a large metal dish,   and I certainly have never managed to get a compass to work sufficiently accurately to just point a dish and make it work without further fiddling.....   

Laters - actually I reckon it would fall onto Zaire.......

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MisterC

Good advice as usual from Martin.

here is a useful site to give you a good idea of the direction for each satellite.

http://www.satpointer.com/

enter your postcode and commune in the first box, then choose the satellite you want to point to - in this case 28.2 E Astra2.

In the top right corner of the map, change the view to a 'satellite' photo, zoom in to see your house and drag the little 'balloon' thing over your house.

The line then gives a good idea of which direction to point to.

There is info underneath the map to tell you the elevation (tilt upwards of the dish) and skew of the LNB (how much to twist the LNB)

Should take you about 5 minutes [:)]

Good luck

Danny

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