Hi we just had a cold call from Orange who have been our internet and mobile provider since we moved to France. Generally they have been very good and we upgraded to fibre 2 years ago.
The only thing that didn’t work very well was the Orange TV. Box I couldn’t get it to work over a (Orange) internet over power line connection ( it needed a plug in Ethernet connection ).
Does any one have the Orange TV and does it work well. I have been told I have to buy a Decoder box for €40 and then a subscription of €19 a month for two years and it includes Netflix, Canal, Apple TV . We already have Netflix which we use a lot (especially in this wet winter) and this deal will add extra channels for less than we are currently paying for Netflix.
One other thing we have been told we can share it with two other households. As we currently share our Netflix with friends in France I am not sure how this works will they have to buy a decoder as well?
If your house is on a triphasé electricity supply then such devices will not work if they are on different phases, unless you fit a coupleur to bridge the data across the phases.
According to your post above you must already have one…?
We are on Tri Phase but the phases are separate one for the house one for the pool and the final one for the Barn
Yes we have an old decoder, that never worked very well, it has a card in the side. Looking at the Orange site for the new decoder says that it can be connected to a TNT socket which I assume is a normal aerial socket.
Out of interest we used to use a Devolo internet over power line system and that worked across the phases. However with the new fibre system we upgraded to a Mesh system which is much faster.
My smart tv runs fine using internet over powerline to the router. I think some smart tvs still need a decoder. Someone will correct me if I’m wrong. I have Orange fibre which I’m incidentally extending to another part of the house so won’t need the internet over power modems.
I have the TV box from Orange, so will share my opinion…
Positives:
Very stable, I don’t think we’ve had any buffering issues whenever we have used it
You can, to an extent, use it to restart programmes that have already begun from the beginning
The device is small and inconspicuous
Negatives:
The user interface is clunky and not user friendly
The remote control isn’t to my liking… it’s very thin and light, and is overly sensitive so I’ve lost count the number of times that I’ve picked it up and it’s changed channels
It’s slow to respond, especially when using services such as Netflix
The EPG is so painful to navigate that I just look stuff up on my phone instead
The replay function is not as good as it should be; it would be great to be able to access the previous few days’ EPG and just select what to watch, but they only have certain shows on certain channels available
You’re constantly being bombarded with adverts for other Orange services or channels
The “international channels” package is poor and expensive
We had Free when I was in Paris and I really liked their TV offering to the extent that I’m thinking of going back to them from Sosh. As an added bonus, their receiver is an Android box so you can add all of your favourite apps to it.
If I had confidence that the changeover would happen without loss of service then I’d have changed by now. At the moment I use Molotov for TV but it seems to be getting quite flakey and I also have concerns about my wife dealing with it should I become unavailable.
Yes, Orange TV works fine but it really needs a direct Ethernet cable, powerline is unreliable. The €19 bundle just replaces separate subscriptions (like Netflix). The 2 other households part is only for streaming apps, not extra decoder boxes. If your friends want full Orange TV, they’d each need their own decoder.
As I recently discovered with my netgem decoder box in the UK, I really don’t need to pay extra for the TV box rental (that’s all it really is) as I have my own decoder box, all I will have when the annual contract is up is the fibre internet. The box will be fine and I own it. Sounds like you are in a similar situation so depends on the cost of buying your own box, saving you €19 per month
The Apple TV box is supposed to be easy to drive. They are bringing out a new one this year that is super powerful and has home automation functionality. I won’t use that system though as I use Home Assistant.
Thanks for that. The old Orange decoder needed an Ethernet cable although I could not run it from the office where the Livebox is so I used Orange internet over power line then Ethernet to the decoder. It was not very reliable. The new decoder they are offering says it works on WiFi I hope that is true.
Please tell me if my understand is correct. At the moment we pay for Netflix with friends here in France but they only want Netflix so would not need a decoder box., just the access codes so they can get it on their smart TV. Where we would benefit from the Apple TV and the Canal Disovery might be interesting.
Corona I think I still need to pay the €19 to get Netflix and the other channels. I have a Humax box with a 90cm dish which works well for all UK channels and for French TV we have a small outside aerial which seems to get most terrestrial channels.
We used to have Sky but got disconnected twice so gave up on that.
[quote=“JohnH, post:15, topic:57039”]
For TV? How does that work?
[/quote]Apple TV for TV and functionality for home automation should one want to use it.
I already have Home Assistant for home automation.
I think you should check what channels you will get. As you said you are already paying for Netflix you would just carry on with that on your own box but may have to pay extra for other channels. I was really surprised on my fibre connection as I thought paying for the extra (hire) gave me extra channels but no, had to pay extra so I am just paying silly money renting a box. If you have a good signal on your phone maybe set up a hot spot and log in to test, that’s how I discovered it.
When Orange Installed Your Fibre They Should Have put a Box at The Back of The TV. I’m With another Company They sent a Technician To Install he Did Everything Drilled Through Walls Run The Cable To The Back Of My TV Then Fitted a Small White Box That The TV Box Pugs into I Can Download Any Apps I Want Great Connection Good Internet Speed Very Happy
We used to have Orange TV with 2 décodeurs, one with an ethernet connection and for the other we had a WiFi receiver which it plugged into. The problem with the app was that it didn’t decode the German bouquet of channels we paid extra for.