TNT television in English
I made an interesting discovery a couple of days ago that might be interesting for people like us who live in France and only have French television, or for owners of second homes in France.
We get out television using TNT - digital signals that are received through the aerial and converted by a decoder. Hence lots of channels (all French), a good quality picture, and no need for a satellite dish. I think in the UK the same thing is called ‘free-to-air’ television.
The TNT decoders cost about 50 euros to buy separately, and about 60 seconds to install. A lot of new televisions have them built in.
All very interesting, I hear you say. Well a couple of days ago I noticed at the beginning of a programme that a little message flashed up in the corner of the screen saying ‘VO sous-titrage, TNT’. That is, ‘original version (English language) available through TNT.
A few minutes playing with the menu and I found that you could choose whether you watched the programme in English or French.
I think this is only available for a limited number of programmes at the moment, and of course only for programmes originally produced in English, and our TV guide didn’t seem to say which programmes they were. But this suggests that people staying in our gites, at least sometimes, can now watch some television in English.And so can we, if we are so inclined.
I’m not quite sure if this is a good thing for us personally, since we don’t have English language TV on principle - because we know we would often watch it, and being forced to only watch French language television helps with our language learning.
A bit of research showed that there was a related problem for French viewers - some sets have ‘version originale’ set as the default, and apparently don’t have the option to change it. Early models perhaps.
Result is, a lot of French are complaining that they can now only watch their favourite programmes in English!
thanks for your very informative and entertaining website! we are a bi-national amero/franco family in nyc/savoie and i often read your news. the tnt decoder would be a welcome item - we have very bad reception in the alps. in the past i subscribed to sky somewhat surreptitiously, but in recent years i just watch my tv from nyc via slingbox - have you heard of that? i have my computer configured to my cable box in the usa and via an attached decoder can watch that “bouquet” on my laptop in france. much cheaper than subscribing to any french or english channels separately.
Thanks for that suggestion - I have never heard of a ’slingbox’ but it sounds like a very useful suggestion for those who still have a property outside France.
I think you can also receive digital TV through a livebox, but I’ve had no reason to try, and I don’t know if it includes ‘version originale’ programmes. It might work in regions of poor TV reception, but of course needs an ADSL phone line, which many rural places don’t yet have…
Cheers!
This is similiar to the CanalSat - CanalPlus and Canal Bouquet sets. Very close to Sky TV many programs are available in VO (Version Originale) or VM (Version Multilingue) via the “Pilote” button at the top of the remote. My guests are often impressed by this function especially when films are on.
The TV guides generally mark programs with VM or VO as well so you can see most of them in the book. CanalPlus/Sat/Bouquet also offers English news channels, American news channels and BBC Prime and World Service.
Hope this helps.
mat62870@yahoo.fr