A quick guide to English language TV in France
Set permanently in France or just travelling, when the question comes to get english HD TV in your home the choice is between a broadband "dish free" HD TV reciever, satellite receiver or web streaming online services.
The Satellite reception has still good days ahead and a rosy
future for the simple resaon that the UK public channels
remain free-to-air via satellite. No monthly fees, you buy
once the equipment and only invest in installation. You may choose a
satellite receiver with or without hard drive recording, or even get a
model which will record one channel whilst watching another. We
cover all of France through a network of selected english
speaking bilingual installers. We install ourselves in the big Paris area
through our own team of professioanl and qualified engineers. Contact us
here with your postal code and we will tell you
what we can do for you.
The Broadband (or internet) reception soution is growing in
popularity specially in the South of France. The UK TV satellite signal is strong only in the
Northern part of France (50 cm dish) and further down in the South of
France near the Spanish border a 130 cm big
dish is typically necessary to receive correctly the BBC channels.Installing a 130 cm dish is not always possible, so expats in
the South often choose the dish-free internet HD TV receiver. It
has some advantages though, the first is that it requires
only a reasonably good home internet. For remote farms and
properties this is not always an option. As only inconvenience,
almost all french
Internet service providers (ISP) require an annual contract. If
you own a holiday home in France and you spent here just a month or two in
the year, maybe an annual contract is not exactly
what you want.
And finally, the Broadband receiver is easy to manage, it
requires a monthly fee to run, but you may take it only for a
month or two and pause it after that, which makes it quite
flexible, you can pay only for the time you need it! One month
of service costs EUR 16, and you get all UK
public TV channels. It Connects directly to any french ISP such
as Orange, SFR, Free, Bouygues etc.
If you prefer to watch english TV in France on small iPad
screens or laptops and other mobile devices you better stay with a UK VPN. You
know that vpns may fail from time to time as they are
permanently tracked down. What we offer is
different - our receivers are for the big real TV screen and reliable
solutions for stable TV reception on your big TV screen Find out
more
...
NO Monthly fees, NO subscription ...
The only way to stay without monthly fees is to install a satellite dish. For France the dish size vary depending on your location. For example in the North, Calais, Paris, Brittany , Normandy, down to Orleans the required dish size is very small (50 cm only) and you can get UK TV even through hidden antennas like this one. Further down to the line Bordeaux, Lyon and the french Alps you will need a bigger 80 cm dish, and next comes Toulouse and Carcassone with a 120 cm minimum dish, Finally in the extreme South, Montpellier, Beziers, Toulon we recommend at least a 130 cm dish and for Cannes, Antibes, Nice & Monaco consider a 150 cm dish.
How can I be sure it will work for me?
When you go for the satellite option - we will examine your property first and you will get a quote. And when you choose the internet receiver - to avoid dissapointment you must first measure your real internet download speed. A good site where you can do this is here. Press the GO button and if you depass the 3 Mb/sec download speed your home is eligible for english TV in France! more ...
