French Free Satelite Reception

J

jon.clem

Member
My Satellite Setup
fortic star
My Location
Suffolk UK
Hi,
I hope I am posting in the correct place.
I would like to add French TV to my free sat set-up. I think it would be easier for me to simply fit a second dish as I struggle to understand how to use the motorised dish I have. My main question is can I use a standard free sat receiver, (I have a Fortic Star), or would I need a French receiver.
I hope someone can answer this for me.
Many thanks.
Regards,
jon.clem
 
My wife watches a fair amount of French TV on the very strong Atlantic Bird 3 Satellite at 5W. You can get this with a Sky Zone 1 minidish with the LNB set to minimum skew (Position 5).

Includes France 2,3,5 and O

There is a smattering of other free channels on other Satellites, too.

Have a look at _http://www.flysat.com/tv-fr.php

Your Fortec Star will be fine for unencrypted Channels and you can simply fit a 2 Port DiSEqC switch so you can seamlessly and instantaneously go from UK to French and vice-versa.

OTOH, if your Motorised dish is correctly installed, it shouldn't take long to learn how to drive it. It isn't at all difficult!
 
French channels are brodcast from various satellites but the main stablemate of national channels including France 0,2,3,5, etc are on 5 West & are very easy to receive in U.K. The Fortec receiver you have would be fine for this.
 
.................... thankyou :D
 
Tivu, I know, lol, my excuse is I had a two year old beating the sh*t out of my keyboard mid posting!
 
I was quite impressed with the number of FTA channels available on 5W when I retuned a customers Nokia 9600 last week.

_http://www.lyngsat.com/ab3.html


One of them however has no audio and I'm not sure why.
 
Also to bear in mind now is that you'll get TF1 and M6 (Swiss versions - but the only difference being the adverts) on 9°E, so those along with France 2,3, and 5 on 5°W is the full set of French main channels all available FTA.
 
Well now, TF1 on 9E had passed me by - thankyou for the "heads up"

It's on 5W as well, but Analogue only (so probably not for very much longer).
 
Actually, TF1 on 9E is DVB S2, so getting that would depend upon exactly which Fortec Star Receiver OP has.

Just added it to my Foxsat list.
 
Channel Hopper said:
I was quite impressed with the number of FTA channels available on 5W when I retuned a customers Nokia 9600 last week.

_http://www.lyngsat.com/ab3.html


One of them however has no audio and I'm not sure why.
Click to expand...

That wasn't 'Demain' by any chance? My DrHD picks it up flawlessly, as does my meter but the VU+ displays it as if it were streaming via a very slow broadband connection and without sound.

@ Adam792: The HD version of M6 Suisse on 9°E is usually excellent quality and the 'M6HD' logo reverts to just 'M6' when showing SD or upscaled SD. (Not like BBC1HD!!)

@ Ghostleader : You're excused LOL (try typing when a cats crawling on the keyboard demanding to be fed!!)
 
hi tivu,
thank you very much to you, ghostleader and adam792 for your replies. i will put a bit more effort into setting my motorised dish up but in the mean time i will try 5w on another mini dish. (i assume 5w is 5 degrees west of due south but i can do some research on this site to confirm - there is so much information here!)
thanks again from a very grateful satelite novice!
jon.clem
 
jon.clem said:
hi tivu,
thank you very much to you, ghostleader and adam792 for your replies. i will put a bit more effort into setting my motorised dish up but in the mean time i will try 5w on another mini dish. (i assume 5w is 5 degrees west of due south but i can do some research on this site to confirm - there is so much information here!)
thanks again from a very grateful satelite novice!
jon.clem
Click to expand...

Hi Jon

If you read the sticky's on setting up a motorised dish this would save you mounting another dish on 5w and you could also receive the channels on 9e. Go ahead setting it up and come back to us if you have any problems and we can iron these out for you in no time.
 
Ive never understood skew on the lnb Tivu, i pick 5w on my minidish about 80% signal so i assume if my skew was correct then the signal may increase above 80. there are numbers on the lnb 1-5 and if i have read the lnb right my lnb is on number 4. Would you recommend me to turn it a little to 5 or leave it, lol
 
For your location real skew for 5W should be almost zero .............. but a Sky LNB won't do zero skew as it is physically designed to a median skew suitable for 28E, with a small degree of adjustment to accommodate different user Lat/Long.

So the best you can do is reduce the skew to the minimum permitted (Position "5"). If it works (my wife's does!), then there is nothing to fix: 5W is the strongest Sat receivable in UK, even stronger in some areas than 28E!

If incorrect skew were ever to be a problem, then the Minidish bracket actually permits the entire dish to be skewed.

But, if it ain't broke ................................
 
Is there any site online that gives you the correct skew for diffrent satellites. I have a 90cm dish and 1.2 mtr dish but ive never skewed any lnb so i may get better signals if i did skew. sorry if im confusing people, lol
 
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