Installing French Satellite TV

[Murphy65]

Hi

We want to install French TV - we have a French bought TV, a decoder (digi-box) and a satellite.  OK - so what do we do next.  Have tried to find satellite, but there seems to be different info about this - the instruction book that came with the box (in half French, half Italian!) isn't clear about which satellite we are actually searching for.  We have a satellite-finder and can lock onto satellites, then the box takes around 20 mins to run through something and come up with the fact that it's found precisely 0 channels!

The booklet says we should use channel UHF36 on the TV but that doesn't work so do we stick with the AV channel that has our UK satellite plugged in? 

I'm sure this has been answered before, but any advice (in very simple, non-technical language please!!) would be gratefully appreciated

Thanks in advance (and hopefullness)

M65

[Anton Redman]

More questions than answers sorry :

Have you purchased Digital/Numerique or Analogue ?

When you say does not work. Do you get the screen menu from the decoder ot display ? -- In any event I would use a SCART AKA Perital Lead

Do you have a dish aimed at the SKY cluster ? which works ?

How many SCART sockets does you TV have ?

Where about Depratment and Town are you in France ?

Must go food on table

[Martin963]

As you're setting it up yourself,  you can experiment a bit in finding which satellite provides the best balance of programmes for you.  However,  probably your best bet to start with is Atlantic Bird 3 at 5 deg west.   This provides both analogue and digital versions of French TV,  although the digital version does not carry TF1 or M6.   The services on Hotbird and Astra 1 are mainly scrambled,  including - unfortunately and unfairly - public service TV.

As Anton says,  you need to be clear that you can see the menus but it sounds as though you can as you say it comes up with the message about no channels.  But you can indeed unplug your existing box from the AV socket and plug in the new one and watch in this way.  If your TV only has one AV input then you can buy a selector switch box for a few euros.  

It is important with most boxes to be sure that you actually correctly select the satellite that you've swung the dish on to,  ie that you don't tell it to look for channels on Astra 1 when the dish is actually looking at Hotbird.

In addition,  some (many) satellite boxes have out of date info in their factory set up memories,  so when you ask them to look for channels they look on the wrong frequencies.  So have a careful look at

http://www.lyngsat.com/atlantic.html (for ab3)

and if necessary input the information shown MANUALLY - this option is often called "advanced search" or transponder search.  For example for French TV digital on AB3 you need to put in 11591 MHz, Vertical polarisation,  symbol rate 20000 and possibly FEC of 2/3 as shown in the table.  Then tell it to search this frequency only.

Clear as mud?

Please ask again if that doesn't do the trick.

[Murphy65]

Please don't be sorry - any help is always gratefully appreciated!!

OK - answers to questions....

It is digital

I can get a menu (in many languages) and various options, such as what satellite, different bands (?) & have got a scart on it

The info about where to point the dish is pretty vague - it talks about it being a different co-ordinate for various regions, and the azimuth (I assume thats the vertical level?) but that info isn;t on the info that came with the dish, so not entirely sure where to point.  It is currently roughly south (I know the box works as we have pointed the new dish to the UK satellite and picked up a few of the UK channels

The TV has 2 scart sockets

In the Dordogne (just) near to Nontron

Hope the food was good!

[Murphy65]

Martin - thanks for this info, it looks really helpful.  When and if it ever stops raining (Mon am!!) will try what you suggest and the direction.

Will let you know how it goes.

Really appreciate the advice, thanks again.