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.

Analogue TV - an important update

For anyone struggling to come to terms with using an anlaogue TV set here in France it's worth noting that all analogue TV transmitters in France will be swtiched off by/on November 30th 2011 as digital TV has now been introduced. There is a phased analogue shut-down starting this year. In other words, worrying about obtaining a compatible analogue set is getting a bit uneccessary. However, you do need to make sure that any digital option that you obtain is compliant with the French digital TV service.

There's information about possible TNT pit-falls in the article "Will my old TV work in France?" in the "TV - terrestrial" section, written in January 2008.

TNT/Freeview update

I've updated the information written on 24/01/2008 regarding using UK Freeview boxes to receive the French digital TV service, TNT.

It turns out that my sweeping statement about being able to use a UK Freeview box in France wasn't wholly correct & that there are some that won't do the business over here. Please go the the post entitled "Will my old TV work in France?" to see the correct version.

Will my old TV work in France?

There is often confusion about whether a televison set bought & used in the UK will work once in France.

Historically the answer was a big fat non! Before the age of digital TV broadcasts all transmissions used an analogue signal but the video format of the broadcast could be different. You may have heard strings of letters bandied about - NTSC, SECAM, PAL.
The UK (& most of Europe apart from France) plumped for the Phase Alternating Line (PAL) format for colour TV broadcasts back in the early 1960s. France went for Sequential Couleur Avec Memoire (SECAM). Both formats use the same number of lines per frame (625), unlike the National Television System Committee (NTSC) standard which uses 525 lines, & is used on the American continent & many Asian countries.

So, a set made for PAL wouldn't "understand" a SECAM signal, & vice versa. However, many modern sets are built to work on both standards, as it saves the manufacturers the bother of making two types. Don't get rid of your UK set until you've checked the documentation that you have with the telly, or Google the "model + make + manual".

07/06/2009: By way of an update on this subject, it's worth noting that all analogue TV transmitters in France will be swtiched off by/on November 30th 20011 as digital TV has been introduced. There is a phased shut-down starting this year. In other words, worrying about the stuff above is getting a bit uneccessary, & you need to read what's below......

Moving onto digital broadcasts: In broad terms the UK Freeview service & the French TNT (Télévision Numérique Terrestre) are broadcast using the same standards (DVB-T with MPEG-2 compression) BUT the UK uses a 2k COFDM (Coded Orthogonal Frequncy-Division Multiplexing), whereas the French use an 8k one. If you have an older UK Freeview box that is only set up for COFDM 2k it won't work in France, but a newer one should have the ability to use 2k & 8k & will work on the French TNT system. The UK should be going over to the more robust 8k standard once the analogue broadcasts are stopped, hence why new boxes should be dual standard. French TNT boxes generally are, so they would work in the UK......

There's an in-depth explanation about COFDM on the DTG site here.  Thanks are due to Ben Davies for that one.

Once you have received a digital terrestrial signal the native format of the TV set is irrelevant (SECAM or PAL).

TVs that are new enough to have a built in Freeview tuner are probably capable of handling both analogue transmission formats anyway, as pointed out above (& be 2k/8k COFDM capable). The TNT service offers more channels than you can get on analogue but, obviously, they are the French ones. As with the UK, not all corners of France have TNT coverage yet, but it's easy to check. There's a TNT coverage map here. 

If you are after British TV then you will have to go for a satellite set-up &, again the TV type won't matter.

If you need assistance with setting up a TV system of any type please don't hesitate to get in touch.