If you’re buying a property in France, as a permanent home or just for holidays, then one of the things you’ll probably want to consider is television. It’s not the most important thing to sort out by any means but, even for the least square-eyed, being able to keep up with current affairs has its advantages.
The first decision to make is whether you’re happy to live with just French TV or if you can’t do without your UK shows.
French television is of a reasonable quality – even the main, terrestrial channels offer a good mix of documentaries, films, live sport and most of the popular US series, along with their own soaps and dramas. The fact that the programmes are all in French can be seen as a positive or a negative – the positive being that it really does help you to learn the language (and it’s real French too, not the technically correct French you normally learn). The negative is that, unless you’re very fluent in French, it does require concentration to follow, which rather defeats the objective if you’re mainly watching TV in the evening to relax.
French television can be received in various ways and the system works pretty much the same as in the UK.
Firstly for example, and regardless of how and what you receive, you must pay for a TV licence which is currently €116 (£78) annually. There are five channels that you can get with just a TV and an aerial – your TV from the UK might work if it’s a recent model – check the handbook to see if it can receive the French Secam signal. If not, TVs in France have become just as cheap as they have in the UK.
The next step is to get TNT (télévision numérique terrestre, which means digital terrestrial TV). TNT works just like Freeview – there are currently eighteen channels including the standard five, all of which are free to receive once you’ve got a receiver. Receivers are available from €59 (£39), but you might need to install a new aerial too, which will set you back another €40 (£27), depending on how good the existing aerial is, if there is one.
Again, if you’re thinking about using your existing gear from the UK, Freeview boxes and iDTVs will work, so long as they comply with the DVB-T standard, which they almost definitely will.
Not all areas are covered by TNT yet, but coverage is rapidly expanding. If you go to www.tnt-gratuite.fr, and click on ‘puis-je recevoir la TNT’, you can type in your postcode to see if you are in a reception zone.
Then there are the more expensive subscription options – available via cable, ADSL or satellite. Unless your French property is in the centre of a major city, you’re extremely unlikely to have access to cable TV and the same applies to ADSL.
Whilst high-speed ADSL connections afford multi-channel TV access in the major metropolitan areas, 95 per cent of the country is only covered by lower-speed ADSL (or no ADSL at all), which doesn’t provide adequate bandwidth for television.
Satellite television, presuming you have the right to install a dish at your property, is the most likely solution for the vast majority of readers. The two major players in French satellite TV are CanalSat and TPS. Both offer free receivers and dishes during promotional periods and CanalSat are even happy for you to install your own dish, avoiding installation charges.
They both have a number of packages to choose from – CanalSat’s range from €11 (£7) to about €48 (£32) per month and TPS’ from €11 to €35.50 (£7 to £24) and they both include some English language channels in their premium packages such as BBC Prime, BBC World and CNN. Details of exactly what you get for your money can be found at www.canalsat.fr and www.tps.fr.
Now, if you can’t possibly get by without keeping up with the goings-on of Albert Square, or you break out into a cold sweat at the thought of missing the snooker, then you’re going to need UK television. If your French home is at the top of a beach-front high-rise in Calais, you can probably get UK television using an aerial, but for the rest of us a satellite dish and receiver, preferably a Sky digibox, is the only choice.
Regular digital satellite receivers will receive nearly all of the FTA (free to air) channels beamed from Sky’s Astra 2 satellite, but Sky’s digibox includes the EPG (electronic programme guide) that lists all of the coming week’s programmes, which are oddly overlooked by French newspapers.
There is also the matter of the two channels you won’t be able to receive with a non-digibox – currently Channel 4 and Five are both FTV (free to view) rather than FTA, meaning you need a viewing card to view them. If you already have a Sky digibox, then your Sky viewing card will work fine as an FTV card (so long as it’s the later one with a picture of a yellow house on it). If you don’t, both the box and the card tend to be available on Internet auction sites.
Those people who have retained a UK postal address also have the option to upgrade to Sky’s subscription packages, so long as you are resident in the UK. It’s worth noting that most viewing cards now only work in the digibox they came with, and often won’t work in a second box.
Finally, you need to consider the satellite dish itself. If your property is in the north of France, and therefore closer to the centre of the Astra 2 footprint, you might be able to receive a signal with a standard Sky digital dish – more likely though, you’ll need to upgrade to a 60cm dish. Those with homes towards the south will need 80cm dishes and, in all cases, a universal LNB. Installing and positioning the dishes requires patience and, if you suffer from vertigo, a little courage on the ladder. Finding the signal can be difficult, even with a signal meter, so be prepared.
Technical bit: The Astra 2 satellite is positioned at 28.2° east of the meridian at the equator. The compass point you need will depend on where you are in France – the further south and/or west you are will mean pointing your dish further towards the east. You can either work out a good estimate of the compass point using a world map and a protractor, or you can patiently sweep the sky from 20 to 40° at varying angles of elevation until you hear a faint signal on your meter (or see a bar appear on your digibox’s signal strength indicator). Before you fine tune the position of the dish, it’s worth making sure it’s the right satellite you’ve found – the Network ID should be 0002 and the Transport Stream 07d4.
So, there you have it – all the information you need to get telly in France, whether it’s Cbeebies for the kids, Match of the Day for the football fans of the household, or an Alain Delon movie for the family film buff…
Main French Channels
TF1: France’s most watched channel – privately owned and with a broad range of mainstream offers, from live UEFA Champion’s League football to dubbed American movies
France 2: The largest of the publicly owned channels, featuring some imported series, but also plenty of home-grown drama
France 3: Also publicly owned, France 3 is made up of a network of regional broadcasters, rather like ITV. There’s a lot for kids on France 3, as well as quiz shows, reality TV, sport and documentaries
Canal +: Some of Canal +’s programming is available to all, but it’s mostly encrypted for which you’ll need to pay a subscription to view. It features lots of high profile shows, including Les Simpsons and Desperate Housewives (which retains its original name and is practically unpronounceable for French people) and recent movies. Famously, Canal + also screens one movie on the first Saturday night of each month for which the content is a little, er, racy
France 5: France 5 is publicly owned and broadcasts up until 7pm each day, at which point it gives up its frequency to Arte. The channel features plenty of shows for children and a healthy blend of magazine shows, documentaries and drama for the whole family
Arte: A Franco-German collaboration, Arte comes on after France 5 at 7pm. As its name suggests, the channel is dominated by highbrow arts programming, documentaries and current affairs.
M6: Officially called Metropole 6, M6 is aimed at a youth audience – lots of American sitcoms and dramas, magazine programmes and music shows. It is also home for Nouvelle Star, France’s answer to Pop Idol.
Watching French TV in the UK
If you’re in the UK and have a satellite dish and a standard digital decoder, you can tune in to France 24, France’s newest channel. Launched in December 2006, it broadcasts international news and current affairs in English and French. See www.france24.com for more details.
TV5Monde is also available in the UK and mixes news coverage with films and favourite French dramas from all over the French-speaking world. The channel is available through Sky on 805 or via digital cable on 825. For more information, visit www.tv5.org
5 ways your telly can help to improve your French:
Watch the news in French once each day
If you have a DVD player, watch your favourite film in French – with English subtitles to start with, then without
Football fans – watch the footie highlights on TF1 (Sunday morning)
Soap lovers – pick a French TV soap and try to get into it (a popular one is Plus Belle La Vie which is on France 3 every evening)
If you’re a beginner in French, try children’s programmes to improve your vocabulary