Chez nous en France we have a 40" TV, we also have a reasonably large lounge so I find it to be on the small side. The main feature was a built in Freesat decoder which is useful, but probably not essential.
Which means I’d quite like a slightly larger set, it needs to be bought in the UK because I don’t want French catch-up apps and if bought in the UK it needs to be less than about £370 to be under the €430 duty free limit.
Which means a fairly budget set - no HDR for instance.
OR I play musical TVs, treat myself to a new set in the UK, and take the 55" set from here to France.
Except that set, while no means “top of the line” was above the duty free allowance when I bought it in 2022 (it was £549) - I assume I can use the “second hand” value but how do I prove what that value might be (if challenged).
Of course none of this would be an issue if it were not for Bre*it
Could you find an advert on eBay/LBC for the same or an equivalent model? I doubt they’d be that bothered, to be honest, about a single item, but it’s sensible to prepare.
No similar set has sold on eBay UK, I will try the French eBay site when I an back near my desktop. No 1 son has decided he wants to look at cricket bats for some reason.
Any decent brand should allow you to choose the country of setup and then offer the apps for that country, my Samsung does. Except that setup insists that it’s in France unless I put it behind a VPN but, once setup it’s fine. Perhaps go to a store, find the one you want and ask to run through the setup options.
How worried are you about being stopped and interrogated, has it happened frequently before?
I have driven over in various vans and the bus loaded past the gunwales with all sorts of stuff. No one batted an eyelid. Of course they could but they never have. Not even with the trailer attached with our expensive bed in it.
Speaking of TV’s, Sony handed their manufacturing over to TCL and Panasonic have done the same to Skyworth, no problem with TCL they are very good but Skyworth not so.
Just don’t buy a Samsung. They used to be OK but these days they have a terrible reputation for going phut and being super expensive to repair with parts being unobtanium.
Nothing much doing, about the best I can come up with on LBC is that all of the 55" “d’occasion” sets are, indeed, under the 430€ limit.
eBay France hardly seems to have any 2nd hand TVs at all.
Not sure that a TV bought in France would offer the UK in its set-up. Certainly the converse is not true. For Samsung sets it might be possible to change that on the “service menu” but there’s no guarantee I would have a working TV afterwards,
In any case I don’t especially want to buy the new TV in France. I was going to say that they are much more expensive than in the UK and that might be true in the general sense but I see the set I’m thinking of is actually the same price.
But as it does not get all that much use I don’t particularly want the best TV to be in France.
UK side all the <deleted> time - they even threatened to confiscate my Leatherman one trip (having found my bike multi-tool which doesn’t have a blade they said “if that had been a Leatherman I would have confiscated it” - almost certainly an illegal seizure as it was, appropriately, in the toolbox they didn’t search**).
Into France not so much but given the size of the TV it would wind up being very visibly sat on the back seat.
**: The Leatherman I have is an old “Wave” model and would be illegal to carry in the UK (as it has a locking blade) without good reason - which is the clincher, the law allows that you might have a good reason (camping, fishing, work etc) - taking it with me as a tool to be used for DIY projects probably counts. Also in my toolbox (with a whole load of other sharp items) is not “about my person” which is what the legislation covering the carrying of knives is all about. I believe the French law is similar.
There are reasons not to buy a Samsung but …
That’s true of rather a lot of electronics these days. I suspect Samsung TVs are no worse than many.
One reason, of course, is that Samsung are really not very good at supporting right to repair and are known for getting you to agree to waive your consumer rights and agree to their binding arbitration in the case of disputes. At least in the ‘States they do this. Not sure if they can get away with in in the EU or UK because you can’t “sign away” consumer (or any other) rights. I honestly don’t know if any other TV manufacturer is better - we’ve discussed the fact that objecting to vendors’ unscrupulous practices quickly gives you no one to buy stuff from.
I do actually tend to buy Samsungs but that is because I know they work nicely with minidlna (now known as “readymedia”), which I use for my media library.
But just about all “smart” TVs want you locked into their infrastructure and all have downsides. I heard LG were pushing ads directly to the TV if you use the smart features, Samsung clearly want you signing in on your TV as the very first thing you do when setting it up. I’d almost consider a 55" monitor and PC running Kodi were it not for the fact that you can’t really buy 55" HDR monitors which are not smart TVs, and Linux HDR support is essentially non existant even if you could (sort out the display side of things kodi has some HDR support but it’s a bit patchy.
I bought a very cheap TV to replace the > 20 year old Samsung that I have in the garage for exercising and the home screen is basically just adverts. Luckily I don’t use it for actually watching TV or it would probably be out the window. Having said all that, for a 40” TV that was well under €200 I really can’t complain about the picture quality.
Back to the original posters point.. assuming you dont want to take risks then bite the bullet and buy a TV here. Nowadays you will have no problem with choosing english language. I would wait for the July sales as this is when you tend to find they can put some stupid discounts on - I managed to get 50% off the inflated prices to start with so came in at something reasonable.
It’s not just setting the TV to English, it is making the TV behave like one bought in the UK and enabling UK catch up apps (iPlayer etc).
Usually, when you set up a TV it asks you the region - but I don’t think you get carte blanche with all the regions the set is destined for. For example here is the setup scheen for the Samsung QN90F (which is one option I’m considering), captured from a YT “unboxing and setup” video.
Only two choices. Watching a couple of French “how to install” videos on YT (unfortunately none are terribly recent) suggests they probably don’t even give you this level of choice if bought in France.
Of course there are some disadvantages to having a UK TV in France - they don’t (or are not configured) to understand the French EPG so channel numbers are not usually thefamiliar ones.
When I brought my Samsung I was told you can only download apps from the app store (VPN) region you select. (French OR English).
If you change from French to English, you lose the apps already installed from the French app store but can then add apps from the UK app store (including local regional variations depending on the postcode you entered. I used my old UK address).
At the time I used ChatGPT to help with the settings. It gave me an “undocumented” way to retain French apps when switching the TV location to UK. Unfortunately I have been unable to relocate that advice.
This meant that I had to keep changing the VPN location on my router to watch the various apps. I found it more convenient to leave my router set to France and put all my UK apps AND VPN on a firestick. (Because,for example, I can’t use my banking app if router is set to UK).
The convenient thing is, you can set up your firestick wherever you are (in your case UK?) and take it wherever you go. It will then work just the same once logged into an internet source.
EDIT Whilst looking at my TV just now, I discovered I had an app to let me order from my local KFC. How bizarre is that?
That sounds right. Then you have a TV working with french terrestrial (I can confirm british tvs do make a right hash of channel sequencing here - you can of course get them all but its a bit messy) and either british or french apps on the tv itself. Plus whatever Mr Bezos lets you do with his fire sticks these days.
Other option is freesat which works well for us in Normandy. A small freesat box is easy enough to bring over and well within duty free limits.
I bought a rather good TCL set on Amazon.fr for 400€, it’s 50 inch, 4k hdr, connects to my Orange decoder.
I just installed my Google account on it & therefore it loaded all the UK apps I have on my English set. With Nord VPN I can watch all the UK tv stations.
