TV Problems

[harkett]

I live in a historically significant village in the dordogne and am not allowed arials or dishes. but are connected to the village cable for television. however we are still unable to access french tv despite using a freeview box or connecting direct to the cable. what do i need to connect to the tv - a french freeview box or a converter of some sort? We are using an English TV - Help would be much appreciated.

[Martin963]

It's very difficult to say without knowing more about how the cable system in your village works.    I imagine the Mairie would be able to furnish you with details.

Some of the options that spring to mind are

1)  Receive communal aerial mounted somewhere "hidden" but with a good analogue signal,   simply amplified and then passed down the cables to houses.    In which case it should still be working fine for analogue,  in which case your British TV might get it if you plugged into the aerial socket,   but ONLY if your TV can cope with System L and SECAM colour.   If it can't and you do a scan,  you may find a nasty black and white picture on some channels,   but with a horrible zig zag line down the middle,   with negative images if it's even stable enough to do that.

2)   Similar to 1,  but with the TNT (digital terrestrial) signals also amplified.   In which case a simple TNT box plugged into the cable socket and SCART's to your TV would be fine and should work.   However,   unless the system has specifially been updated to carry TNT signals you'll probably draw a blank on this.   However,  your British set in these circumstances should work fine,  no systems incompatibility for digital standard definition.

3)    More sophisticated system where selected channels are picked up and distributed on new frequencies via the cable.  A system like that might carry a limited number of additional channels picked up from -for example - satellite.   This is likely to be with system L again though...

4)   Even more sophisticated digital distribution requiring a special decoder box in each house.   Large range of channels.   I think this last is unlikely as it's normally the bigger towns that have this sort of thing.

So you see,  I think your first port of call is the Mairie with a question on the technique in use.    Or possibly find a friendly neighbour with a working system and see whether their TV is plugged direct into the cable or via a box.     Find out which channels they get,   that will tell us quite a bit I suspect.

Then post back and we'll try and help further....