Sky TV in France

[flyingcloud]

Can someone tell me in basic terms how I can get Sky TV in France?

I have been quoted €6000 installation by a Paris based outfit!

TIA

We looked into too, it would have cost us about 1,000 euros initially plus a hefty monthly amount - can't remeber how much. It was through a company that has the sky boxes and UK 'address' all set up. We didn't bother as we are not big TV watchers and we get sky news, BBC world through our internet TV with Orange.

It depends what you want though, my friend has just positioned her satelite and gets all the UK terrestial channels - she must have some sort of decoder box too - don't know what though.

Anyway, I am sure you can do it much cheaper than 6,000.

Sorry haven't been much help but didn't want to leave your post unanswered.

Thanks - I actually need a full package for work, so it would have to be a Sky package.

I'm just wondering if I can go to Dixons, buy a digibox, set up a subscription using a (work?) UK address and bring it over? Or will they get suspicious if I don't call for an installation?

You can watch British TV through your computer, you just need a VPN. Costs around £5 a month. No dish needed. Simples.

Pardon my ignorance, what's a VPN?

Virtual Private Network. So it looks like you are in UK.

We use our sky box from uk, plugged in to an existing dish...but DH had to spend many happy hours on roof getting it pointing at the right satellite (you can get details of vaguely where to point online and then we had this tool thing you connect to dish to finetune further...)

Unfortunately now the trees are in leaf the signal is blocked totally...so we have gone back to plan A for the moment which is to watch online via a tv proxy (cost 8euro/monthish). We use
this one have been happy with it. We only have the free stuff but if you look on the tvproxy site you can have sky packages set-up.

You're in central Paris aren't you? You may have problems putting a dish up anyway so this may be the solution, although admittedly it is a bit of a pain having to go through computer to turn on, change channel etc. At least it doesn't cost £6k!

Thank you.

Am outside Paris and hopefully I can get a dish on my little roof.

In that case you can buy the kit yourself in uk (but you will need uk address for sky.) It is fiddly to get the dish set-up pointing in the right direction, forget it if you are surrounded by big trees like us! Basically the satellite doesn't know where you are looking at it from so as long as you can tune in to the correct satellite it will work just like in the uk. Look online for advice on where it needs to point. If you get stuck I can check with DH!
Good luck!

How does one go about setting up a VPN? I would love my PC to think it is in the UK!

Me, too!
Last time I tried to access BBC iPlayer from France it told me it was geograpically unavailable

Portofino and Rosie - I will email you the details when DH gets back from his jolly work trip to London. But it sounds like what Dilbertina has.

Rosie - I have just emailed you about something different.

Ooh thank you! DH says it is FAR too complicated. I love proving him wrong!

If you do have have a UK address and can have Sky box there (ie you have a home here still) you could investigate Slingbox. Tis fab.

Sky are very hot on people installing their boxes abroad and can remove your subscription if they find out. In theory Sky only has the rights to broadcast the channels in the UK, hence not being allowed to show them abroad. Same with trying to view iPlayer etc abroad.

Sky regularly dial into boxes "to do upgrades on the software" but in actual fact they are often cheking that the box is still connected to a UK phone line.

My folks had Sky in France via their box in London that they just took over with them but when Sky started getting sniffy the bought a Slingbox (£100 ish) and now they can connect to their Sky box in London via the internet on the Slingbox.

Ours cost 300 euros to install the dish and point it correctly. That's in the vendee mind you my French too some time to get the message through. I just bring the sky box from home and connect

Yes, my tv proxy thing does mean our computer thinks it's in UK - or rather other computers think it is anyway. So I can watch bbc iplayer and channel4OD etc. It is very easy to set-up, you just pay to join and then do a very quick download and change a couple of settings - I managed it without help so must be pretty simple frankly!

You can just pay for a month to try it out.

had a look at tv proxy, you're supposed to pau tv license as well, do you guys pay it? If I don't, what's gonna happen, given that I live on the other side of the continent?

TV License? Ummm honestly? No.

Nothing has happened yet (been using it nearly a year)...TVproxy are attempting to cover themselves legally I imagine by advising you you should have one for watching bbc online (this would be true for online in uk also or even if you were watching via satellite from abroad). I think they say they'll provide details to licensing people "if requested". Frankly I would think it would be unlikely the licensing people would go to the trouble of tracking us down abroad, then proving we have been using proxy to watch BBC - simply not cost-effective for them. I guess there is an outside possibility but I'm not losing sleep yet, I also suspect tvproxy would warn if there was a crackdown...fingers crossed!

This is really interesting - there was a segment on You And Yours on Radio 4 on Monday about VPNs.

While it's not strictly allowed it seems that no-one is going to do anything about it - unless you are flagged up as a person of interest and using it for dodgy purposes.

Yes, my dodgy purpose would be Jonathan Ross!

I know you need to have Sky, but for anyone else, we paid ?400 for a new dish, Freesat and TNT box to use with existing dish. We're in the Limousin so maybe cheaper than idf.