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How to get the French TV signals from 5W
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One of the commonest questions I get asked is "How do I get the free French channels from 5W?" Technically it's actually normally fairly simple, but may require you to do some tinkering to get it to work.
The Stations
There are currently 8 channels available:
TF1 / France 2 / France 3 / France 5 / M6 / Canal + / Arte / Tele MonteCarlo.
Canal + is encoded for much of the time, but does run clear part of the day.
TV5 used to operate on this satellite, but left 5W towards the end of 2002.
What you need to consider
There are 3 things you need to look at.
1) The age and type of your LNB (the bit on the end of the arm on your dish)
2) The settings within your receiver.
3) The direction your dish is pointing
1) The LNB.
The French channels broadcast at much higher frequencies than the Astra 1 or Hotbird
channels that most of us watch. Modern LNB's switch high / low band by means of a 22khz
tone sent up the LNB cable from the receiver.
If you have a Sky system that is pre 1997, then chances are the LNB is not suitable for
reception of the French channels. You need to have a look at the LNB, and see if it has a
label on it.
Old type LNB's are single band. You can tell if you have one of these old ones if it has
something along the lines of "LO 10 GHz" (or LO 10,000MHz) written on the label.
(Dont worry too much about what the technicalities of this mean, you just want to identify
the LNB.)
A modern LNB will have "Universal", or LO 9.75 / 10.6 GHz, (possibly LO 9750 /
10600MHz)
If you really want to know about LNB's, there is a page dealing with the finer points of
LNB's on Martin Pickering's site, which you can find here:
If your LNB is of the old type, remove it, throw it away, and go buy a new Universal one,
since you will never get the French channels on an old LNB. New ones are about 20 UKP from
on line dealers. Check out the Satcure site. If you have a round dish then you probably need one of
the 40mm throat clamping types. If you are using an oval Sky dish, then look at this page instead, as
the fittings are different. For 5W in the UK you can use any cheap lnb as the
satellite puts out such a real powerhouse signal. Use my Satcure
referral code and you can get a small discount on your order too :-)
2) Setting up your
receiver
Unless your receiver is a very old one, it should be suitable for reception of the French
channels. However, you may now need to tinker with the settings on your receiver to get it
working.
Have a look through the menu settings on your receiver. Firstly you want to look for a
setting that turns the 22khz signal on. Look for a setting labelled, "22khz" or
"tone". Switch ON if necessary.
You may need to alter the LNB settings as well. Some receivers will have a 9750 / 10600
setting already programmed. This is the one you want. You may have to manually alter the
numbers on some boxes to these figures.
Tune your receiver to 12732 V (France 3). This is the highest frequency used by the French
stations. If the box wont accept this, something isnt set up right internally within the
box. Check your settings again.
It is possible to buy external tone inserters if your receiver doesnt support this feature. However, as replacement analogue receivers are now so cheap its hardly worth the expense unless you have specific reasons to keep the receiver. If you want to replace your receiver, see if you can pick up a Pace MSS series. I know these work fine with the French stations.
3) The Dish
Your dish needs to be pointing at the Atlantic Bird 3 satellite, which has an orbital
position of 5W. If you are living in the UK or France, then your dish needs to be pointing
at 5 degrees west of due south. (this is near enough to at least find the satellite across
this part of western Europe. Further east you will need to make allowances).
If your dish is currently pointing at Astra 1 at 19E, then this is an excellent starting
point to find 5W. With a bit of re-tuning of the satellite box, and some patience, you can
work your way fairly quickly round the orbital arc one satellite at a time. Doing it this
way will ensure you never get too far off the satellite arc.
The satellites to work your way around are:
Astra 1 19E
Hotbird 13E
Atlantic Bird 3 5W
Current frequencies and channels to look out for on each satellite can be found on the
appropriate pages on this website.
With a bit of luck, then it shouldnt take you more than about half an hour maximum to find
the French programmes on 5W. The signals are very strong, and if everything in your
equipment is set up properly, you cant miss them.
Tweak the alignment of your dish to give you sparkly free reception, and enjoy the
programming. (It may be difficult to get rid of all the sparklies, The French
transmissions seem prone to black sparklies even when evrything is set up correctly).
French TV standards - the SECAM problem.
French TV mainly uses the SECAM transmission standard. Whilst you can watch SECAM transmissions on British PAL tv's, the pictures will only be in black and white. Elsewhere in Europe, multi-standard tv's are much more common than here in the UK, so you may well be lucky and get colour pictures. You can get SECAM-PAL transcoders, but they arent cheap, and are now difficult to find.. The last one I saw advertised was priced at around 140UKP.(No I dont have any available, so please dont ask! - use google or buy a satellite magazine and look through the adverts)
Some receivers have the necessary secam transcoder circuits already built in. My beloved Echostar AD3000IPVA shows all the French stations in colour - even using the rf aerial cable :-) See if you can find a secondhand Echostar on Ebay - alhough they are few & far between, & as they are such good receivers they command a high price...
Other sources of French
TV in Europe.
Analogue:
TV5 Europe is transmitted on the Hotbirds at 13E.
Canal+ is transmitted on Atlantic Bird 2 at 8W,
(although its the only analogue signal there). Its scrambled for at least part of the day.
Digital:
TV5 Europe is broadcasting via the Sky Digital
service. Please check Channel 805 (although you will need to be a Sky subscriber).
TV5 broadcasts in free digital on assorted frequencies on Astra 19E and Hotbird 13E. Check
out the various charts on my digitalsat
web site for details of current frequencies.
LCP / Arte / Liberty TV all broadcast in free digital from 19E. Arte is also available on 13E.
Euronews - on various platforms - has a French soundtrack. Change your receiver language preference to French to get it. (this works on a Sky Digibox too as the 28E transmissions carries the various languages, not just English)
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