Badger Électricité

Telephone & TV sockets - the truth!

Here follows an update of a previous posting, as things have become clearer of late:

There is often confusion &/or denial about the requirements for TV & telephone (PTT) outlets here in France. Hopefully what follows will clarify things.

French domestic wiring regulations (NF C 15-100) specifies certain minimum amounts of power sockets, lights, communications outlets (TV & phone points) etc. These minimums apply to new builds & total rewires of existing property if they are to comply with regulations in force at the time of inspection*.

The normes specify that there should be a "prise de communication" (deemed to be an RJ45 type socket) in all "pièces principal". So, that means that all obvious rooms such as lounges, dining rooms, bedrooms, studies, etc. (plus the kitchen) need to have one, with the minimum total being two (for a small apartment I guess).

However, this is not to be misinterpreted to mean that all rooms need both a TV & a phone/communications point. This is because a "prise de communication" is ultimately intended to supply all communications needs from the one outlet i.e. phone, computer network/internet & TV signals. How this works is the subject of another posting, but if the cabling used for these outlets isn't up to the necessary standard to take the higher frequencies required for terrestrial TV &/or satellite TV signals it will still be necessary to install TV outlets ("prises de type coaxial") where they are required. As you'd expect, there is a minimum specification for this, being:

Two coaxial outlets for accommodation up to to 100m² habitable area.
Three coaxial outlets for accommodation over 100m² habitable area.
A place with under 35m² habitable area is allowed to get away with only one TV outlet.

All communications outlets need to be placed adjacent to a power outlet to allow easy connection of associated equipment i.e. cordless phone base stations, answering machines, computers etc. The same principle applies to TV outlets if they are in separate locations.
Don't forget if you wish to record from satellite TV whilst watching a different channel you will need to have two dish feeds installed to your receiving equipment.

Personally I think this is all quite sensible & takes future needs into account, but I appreciate that the whole multi-purpose communications socket thing is a bit confusing at first. As said above, this is a subject for a future posting.

*Any new build or renovation that has had a permis de constuire logged on or after 01/01/2008 needs to have RJ45 outlets rather than the old style inverted T shaped phone points, & have the points wired in Cat 5 (or better) cable. Any new build or total rewire then has all the TV & phone cables wired back to a central point (the "tableau/coffret de communication") where they can be patched accordingly. This might sound complicated but it is a bit of "future proofing" & is there to enable such points to be multi-purpose phone, LAN & TV outlets if so desired, as already mentioned. That's one on the left below.

A final tip about TV sockets: It's a good idea (but a bit more expensive) to use the triple TV outlets that have a satellite F connector, & male & female co-ax outlets for TV & FM radio, as on the right above. These are fed via one cable, with the different frequency signals being merged onto it inside your tableau de communication, or even at the dish &/or aerial position.

Obviously, Badger Électricité fits all such necessary wiring as part of full rewires, or can do so as an upgrade.

Sky boxes behaving badly......

In the past 3-4 weeks we have been having an odd problem with our Sky box, & this may well be one that others out there have had too.

It's quite simple - the box has been switching itself to standby automatically. Though this is obviously a good thing due to there being a bit of a power saving it's extremely annoying to those of us who rely on the box being on in order to record things to an external recorder &/or download EPG information from the likes of Guideplus+ (http://www.europe.guideplus.com/ ).

Anyway, thanks to those useful people on the Total France forum I have found out that Sky have been updating ordinary box software over recent weeks & that many boxes now have the option of "Auto Standby" (Sky+ users have had this option since 2007). The only problem with this change is that the default setting is "On", & after 2 hours of not having any activity from the remote after 23.00 it goes to sleep. This led us to think our box had a fault. Anyway, it's very easily set to "Off" via option 5 on the "Services" menu.

There's a forum thread about the whole thing here on Total France.

We were very glad to solve this puzzle, as the festive season would have been a bit glum if it was filled with constant recriminations about why programmes hadn't been recorded.......

Channel 4 - update

It's slightly old news now, but things have moved on since my post of in the "TV - satellite" section on April 29th 2008.

Sky now carry Channel 4 as a Free To Air channel. so any Sky box will pick it up, even without a card. As mentioned before, I'm sure Five will be following suit in the near future.

Channel 4 now Free-To-Air (no longer just on Sky!)

Just recently Channel 4 has started broadcasting as a proper Free-To-Air channel (i.e. unencrypted) from the Astra 28.2° satellite cluster. For those of you who want all the info on the Astra stuff, go to the link in the sidebar.

What this means is that you no longer need a Sky box with a card to receive C4 in France - any satellite decoder can get it. Five is due to go the same way too.

So, if you know how to tune your box in the details you need for C4 are:
Astra 2D, transponder 42, frequency 10729, vertical polarity, SR 22000, FEC 5/6. It comes up as "8350'.

If you need to know more about things like this, don't hesitate to get in touch. Happy tuning!

Satellite TV, part 2: what's coming down from up there?

If you are curious to know what's being broadcast from which satellites, check out the following:

Astra 28.2° East - for the majority of UK FTA (Free-To-Air) stuff & Sky.

Astra 19.2° East - lots of European broadcasts, subscription French TV (CanalSat, which gives you all the main french stations, plus loads more - the BSkyB of France....), plus some French FTA & BBC World.

Hotbird 13° East - very international & lots of it, plus BBC Prime (by subscription) & BBC World.

Atlantic Bird 5° West - Atlantic Bird at 5° West. The place for FTA French national TV stations.

Free-To-Air chanels are listed here: UK FTA  French FTA 

Also, don't forget that all satellites also broadcast a host of radio stations. If you can't cope without your daily dose of Radio 4, Virgin Radio, Classic FM or Kerrang! then using a satellite system to pick them up is an easy option. My personal top tip is that rather than having your TV on just to listen to the radio you can hook up the stereo sound output of a satellite receiver (they all have them) to your home hi-fi/stereo system, et viola! - digital quality radio on decent loudspeakers. No more struggling to get long wave or FM broadcasts from the UK.

As ever, if you aren't into all this technical stuff, then Badger Électricité can do whatever is needed to get the TV & radio stations you want.

Satellite TV, part 1: what do those cheap kits do?

Many people want to be able to view UK TV whilst in France, via satellite broadcasts. Alot of people also think that they have to have a Sky system to do so. Although Sky boxes work very well in France not everyone has a viewing card, & may not want to obtain one. However, when faced with the array of satellite kits that confronts them in the average large brico store many folk get even more confused......

What must be remembered is that although all the major UK channels are carried by Sky, they are also available Free-To-Air (FTA) & are thus readily received by any satellite dish & tuner. Most UK FTA & Sky channels are broadcast from the cluster of satellites at 28.2° East.

So, you've seen a kit with a dish, receiver & various bits & bobs, but aren't sure whether it will help you..... Well, it will. A French digital (numerique, not analogique) satellite receiver will receive all the FTA channels that are available on any satellite you point it at. If pointed at the Astra 28.2° East cluster you will therefore get all the BBC options, ITV 1,2 & 3 but NOT Channel 4 or 5 as these are still carried by Sky only & are scrambled. To view them you need a Sky box & a valid Sky card. If you aren't bothered about wall to wall Big Brother, endless police chase programs or comestic surgery you won't miss 4 or 5 (but there is Grand Designs....). The C4 & Five issue is supposed to be being resolved, but I've given up holding my breath.

Anyway, a cheap kit of receiver, LNB & dish from one of the brico sheds will cost up to 100 Euros. You usually need to get the mounting bracket for the dish & some cable as an extra. There are many web sites with info about how to set up a dish - Googling "satellite alignment" is a good start.

If you aren't into fiddling about with all this kind of stuff please note that Badger Électricité will happily sort out a satellite system for you.