French terrestrial television

Technology
#1

I have done a fair amount of technically-challenging installations here (sat. tv incl.aiming dish, replacing LNB, fixing Humax box; installing 2 heat pumps, lots of computer odds and ends, working how to get DV video onto SD cards; exterior security wifi camera…).

But. 30-year old technology is giving me gip.

I’m stuck now I want to access french terrestrial tv. I have an aerial, I have a location where I can fix it, I have a TV and I have the coaxial cable and connectors. I just don’t know whether I need some sort of gizmo box before the cable goes into the TV. ‘In the old days’ you just stuck the aerial lead into the back socket on the TV and got one of the kids to go over and change channels. The TV I have does have a remote. As far as the aerial is concerned, I’m pretty sure it is correct, but how can I find out about the transmitters that I might use? The neighbour’s aerial points towards Bergerac but I didn’t notice whether the dipoles are horiz. or vert.

So can someone please tell me a website with the relevant transmitter positions for here (Razac d’Eymet) that has the polarization details on it? Also the question about whether or not I need a box?

#2

Is this resource any use?

There was a post on SF some little while ago on the same subject:

Somewhere else there was a comment about the type of coax cable to use. Seems that there are 2 types (one intended exterior and one intended interior) and getting them mixed up can lead to issues.
You don’t mention if your TV is “smart” or not. Older TVs may well need a TNT encoder to function IIRC

#3

I think it is likely if your TV is less than 10 years old it will work when you scan for digital channels once you plus the correctly aligned aerial in. A remotely modern TV will have a built in digital decoder.

#4

We have a UK tv which we were going to use, but we also have this:

P10121-164723
P10121-1647234032×3024 1.43 MB
which we bought here in 2013. Using this means a more complicated coax. run, but that’s not unsurmountable.

#5

Thanks for the link to the information. It’s sorted me out.

1 Like
#6

Graham, very interesting and helpful, thanks

#7

Graham, thanks for the encouragement. Something that’s being bugging me for yonks is now cleared up. I’m sure a lot of people will say ‘that’s obvious, didn’t you know that?’ That something is that I can have terrestrial French tv PLUS Freesat into the same TV. I just have to press the ‘source’ button and switch from one set of channels to the other. So I will now have the Humax, connected to the dish (two inputs) into ‘ext.1’ and the lead from the terrestrial aerial into ext.2.
I guess that people who have had a professional set their TVs up have been doing this for years!!

#8

It’s what SF is for :wink:
Glad you’ve got it sorted.