French Digital Terrestrial Television (TNT)

[montaigne]

Digital Terrestrial Television is about to be launched in France. Does anyone know if I can use my UK box over there?

 

[rolfw]

Haven't seen the spec yet, but I guess that they will use similar QAM rates etc, as the equipment is now available off the shelf.

 

[easysat]

This seems to be a semi-official site http://www.tvnt.net/ in French. You should check the coverage maps as initially only about 35% of the population will be able to get digital terrestrial TV.

Only receivers that can decode an OFDM signal with 8K carriers will work in France. The first UK digital receivers could only cope with 2K carriers because they used cheaper and slower Digital Signal Processors (DSP). Consequently the UK has to keep on using 2K carrier transmissions. Sometimes being first isn't always a good idea!

 

[rolfw]

Interesting how bad the quality of the reception maps is, doesn't bode well for the service. ;)

 

[montaigne]

Thanks, I checked the site and it looks like I might just be in range. I have a Triax 2000 which I think does 8k. Anyway I'm going to give it a try at Easter, I'll post the results here.

 

[easysat]

Interesting how bad the quality of the reception maps is, doesn't bode well for the service. ;)

Not surprising really when you consider the size of the country. Even with analogue TV, reception could be very poor even in some big cities. What is really criminal in France is that public TV is not free-to-view on digital satellite. After all, what do you pay your licence money for if you can't even have a decent, ghost-free picture with stereo sound?

 

[closetosoton]

Digital Terrestrial Television is about to be launched in France. Does anyone know if I can use my UK box over there?

depends which box you have, i recently bought a Sagem box (French made of course), which upon config asked you which country you were in and France was a choice. i now have a Sony which doesn't give you a choice.

-cts

 

[rolfw]

Not surprising really when you consider the size of the country. Even with analogue TV, reception could be very poor even in some big cities. What is really criminal in France is that public TV is not free-to-view on digital satellite. After all, what do you pay your licence money for if you can't even have a decent, ghost-free picture with stereo sound?

Agree with the reception quality of analogue, but I was actually referring to the quality of the maps themselves, practically unreadable.

 

[easysat]

Agree with the reception quality of analogue, but I was actually referring to the quality of the maps themselves, practically unreadable.

Apologies Rolf for not reading your post properly. On the site I mentioned, you can get better maps for a particular locality by following the link "Module TDF de recherche par communes" through to TDF's site. Or you can go direct to http://www.tdf.fr/tnt/ and hunt around. TDF runs most of the TV and radio transmitters in France.

 

[PaulR]

Followed the links to the TDF site and, blow me down, there was even an option for an English version.

PaulR