How to get French satellite TV

October 27, 2008

The easiest way to receive French TV in your home is to get an aerial installed by a local company, and use a TNT set top box which will give you access to 20 or so free channels. (A level of local knowledge is required for this, so find an installer close to you.)

If terrestrial French TV is not an option then you have 2 alternatives using satellite:

To access France 2, 3 and 5, Arte and LCP for free you will need to have a generic digibox and a dish pointing at Atlantic Bird 3 (nominally at 5 degrees west of south, from Brittany around 3 degrees west of south and an elevation of aprox 34degrees)
If having no program guide for UK TV is not an issue for you then 2 dishes can be connected to one box giving seamless access to both French and UK TV

Your digibox should pick these channels up on a satellite scan, if it does not then you will need to create a new transponder: frequency 11591, polarity vertical, simbol rate 20,000, error correction 2/3.

If you want more channels then you will need to buy a TNTSat box, again available from your local brico. This comes with a card giving access to 20 or so channels.
The dish for this box will need to be ponting at Astra1 (nominally 19degrees east of south, from Brittany around 28 degrees east of south and an elevation of aaprox 31degrees). This is a dedicated box and once it is connected to the dish there is little input required from the user.

If this makes absolutely no sense at all, then contact us and we can set things up for you.

Written by Bart · Filed Under How-to