OK…my first thread…
I’ll be moving to France from Italy sometime in the next 6 months (hopefully) and wondering if it’s worth bringing my Italian TV - a perfectly OK (tho 10 years old) Panasonic LCD ‘Viera’ HD, which picks up Italian terrestrial + SKY-Italia.
Had to buy this when initially moving from UK to Italy, as my UK telly did not function properly. Am I going to have to go through this process all over again when I move from Italy to France ?
As far as I know France has not switched to the DVB-T2 standard (nor has Italy) so you should be fine but the easiest thing is to bring it with you and see what happens.
At some point France probably will switch to the new standard as it allows for the possibility of more channels - at which point the set might stop working.
However when you sort out an Internet connection you may find that our ISP offers a good TV package (assuming that you get a decent connection speed, of course) in which case you could go for TV over IP and then would just need to use the TV as a monitor via its HDMI connection and not really have to worry about whether it is compatible with the broadcast signal.
One thing which probably won’t work, however, is the channel number mapping so you might well find that TF1 is not neatly on channel 1 (our UK TV had everything in the 800’s) - it is possible there is a way of telling the TV that it has been moved to France (though sometimes this is on a hidden “service” menu).
If you want UK TV that is a whole different kettle of fish.
It’ll work to some degree … depending on your source you may well need a “box” - but plug it in and try. If you’re relying on satellite it’ll definitely need a box - but the TV itself will work in some form
Thanks Paul…watching UK terrestrial/Sky-UK when we get to France is as yet a big unanswered q.
Where we are in Italy, unless you’ve got something like a 3m dish, anything UK’s not accessible. There’s a stand-alone Sky-Italia service which has a fair bit of English-language programming, but bears no relation (aside from Sky News) to Sky-UK. Sky-Italia carries a bit of UK terrestrial programming too.
Does Sky-France exist offering a similar output ? I guess we might end up with a UK package, but it’s incredibly depressing that after 10 years away, the same old crap…er…I mean much-loved favourites…are still on…
Depends where you are moving to - the UK spot beam covers much of northern France, we have a 60cm dish in Brittany and pretty much perfect Freesat reception.
Not as far as I know - there are a couple of outfits that offer packages but are independent as far as I can see, just google “Sky France”
If you maintain links to a UK address and can base a subscription there you can use the streaming services - at least according to this page, it looks like you occasionally need to stream somthing from an IP address Sky thinks is in the UK.
got a 1m30 dish in south France (40k north of Marseille) and get Freesat 98% perfect - through the decoder of course
Can’t be arsed tbh…I use Windscribe on the utra-rare occasions there’s something on in the UK I absolutely have to see, but with no UK postal address, I may have to see what packages are available in France.
Thanks for the assorted pointers
We use an IPTV service, You need 10mbs download speed but if you have at least that you can use either a smart TV or a TV box.
Service costs me €70 a year for every UK TV channel inc sports etc etc as well as USA and international sports as well, in Full HD as well.
There are some good IPTV services, but you do need a decent internet connection, if you don’t mind just having the Freesat channels and are in the North then a dish aligned with the Astra 28.2oE cluster is cheaper long term.
Thankfully we have good internet both in France and at home so my set-up is:
Freesat for UK live TV
Home-brew VPN for catch-up services
Orange IPTV box for French TV
there’s a standard TV aerial through which we could get French digital TV but when I bought a TV with Freesat tuner built in I didn’t realise that it could be set for the satellite tuner, or the regular tuner but not both, so I use the Orange TV system for French channels - it’s academic though as we never watch French TV (maybe if my language skills improve some more).
One thing which might be worth being aware of is that if you buy a “Smart” TV with the intent to use the various UK catch-up services (iPlayer, etc) is might be wise to do the initial set-up in the UK (you’ll have to buy the set in the UK anyway).
I bought a new set to take over having used a fairly ancient one for which software support was gradually getting less and less (so in the end it just had iPlayer working). Plugging it in for the 1st time with a French IP address meant that it (and the manufacturer’s servers) figured out that it was in France and configuring itself accordingly - which was not what I wanted.
Is that kind of i/net access generally available in France ? Are you talking about a package that lumps together phone…i/net…tv ? How’s it delivered ?
IPTV is actually pretty mature in France, my line is non-dégroupé so I’m “stuck” with Orange (actually the service has been OK) - basically you get the Livebox which is the modem/router/WiFi AP and a separate TV set-top box and remote control, you just hook that to the TV via HDMI and the Livebox (if memory serves that can be via Ethernet or WiFi). Originally I only went for the TV package because you can’t get VDSL without it - the service is free but the TV box adds to the rental, I think it’s 3€ a month.
It works just like any set-top box, has an EPG and with the higher packages wideo on demand etc. Bouygues, SFR, La Poste and Free all do TV packages and I imagine that the presentation is the same. Apparently more people now watch TV in France this way than via terrestrial broadcasting.
If you want UK or USA TV there are various options, usually with their own “box” or, if you are technically minded you could look at things like kodi to roll your own.
The technology involved is usually a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to make your IP connection appear to be coming from the UK and sometimes DNS tweaks to make access via the VPN transparent.
One potential limitation to these systems is that the UK broadcasters don’t really want you watching UK TV outside the UK so sometimes block the UK side of any VPN in use - it’s a bit of a game of whack a mole but occasionally you might find a service stops working. Also not all suppliers are legit - the police shut down a big pirate IPTV provider earlier this year.
Google something like “IPTV provider” or “IPTV provider France” if you are interested.
We use Free.fr and get our high speed via our mobiles 70+mbs!!
Costs €16 a month and unlimited for everything - as long as you have their landline.
many sources of IPTV - not kosher but many providers
My advice would be
Works for us and we are right down south.
Well…it’s some way down the line before I’ll be in a position to do this (hopefully not too long…) but yes…seems like a plan provided I have the tech expertise to get it all up/running.
Tks for the advice