Satellite for French TV

[RacingSnake]

Hi. We are living in the UK but would like to watch French TV as well as English. Can anyone suggest the best (least expensive for good quality) satellite? We thought about one of the free ones, like TotalSat (I think), but are worried that it will be all shopping channels.

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The thing I don't understand is; if you point the satellite dish in the right direction for free French channels, can you still get English ones? Would not like to lose access to QI and ITV3!

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You get a separate set top box. So when you want to watch satellite TV you turn on the set top box and when you want regular English TV just turn off the set top box.

For those who want to receive the French channels:

I have just bought a 'terminal stellite numerique STRONG' a 129 euros chez darty. www.darty.com/nav/achat/image_son/reception_tnt_satel lite/recepteurtntparsatellite/strongsrt6410-_tntsat.ht ml

This system is only for French residents and you need to give the details of someone who pays the 'redevance tele' (try your parents!: you will need to give their address and date of birth).

You need a satellite dish of 80cm diameter (this works in kent at least, you may need a bigger dish elsewhere). The dish needs to point to the satellite Astra 19 degree east. For info, the satelitte dish cost me £49 and the installation costed £89.

Now I have all the normal channels: TF1, France 2, 3, 4, 5, Arte, M6 and Gulli (cartoons for children) plus others. BLISS!!!

www.tntsat.tv/

www.multilingualfamily.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=651&PN=1

I would love to get the regular French channels! However, I understand nothing to satelite TV - with the darty decodeur, would we still need to subscribe to a package?
And more importantly, would it work for us in Scotland?

I do it the other way around, get British and German TV in Switzerland. It is possible.

You need either two sat dishes, or one that can access more than one satellite simultaneously. Such as this one Multytenne plus a set top box.

We get all the freeview channels with that. It will depend on where you are in UK if you can aim the dish at both the French and the British satellites.

Thank you for all your ideas.

We got a motorised dish, which can point at half a dozen satellites, and get hundreds of free channels; several German, Spanish, lots of Arabic, Persian etc, quite a few Eastern European and some oddments like the God Channel.

I was led to expect that there would be access to some regular French channels, but actually can only get TV5 Europe and Arte. There are some good documentaries and films, but children's programs are only for an hour in the morning at weekends and are appalling.

It will be good for my French (and German and Spanish) and help DH keep up links with French culture, but no use whatsoever to DD (3).