Technology

Technology Satellite TV and Internet by Stuart Wallace

Well, summer must now officially be over. All our visitors have been and gone and, in some cases, it wasn’t too sad to see them go. I’m not saying that my mother-in-law and her sister were a challenge, but I’m thinking of doing a cross-Atlantic swim whilst wearing concrete flippers as that seems like a lot less hassle. Mrs W was sad to see them leave of course. So much so that I suspect they’ll be back next year. Doesn’t matter to me, I should be crawling onto dry land somewhere along the Eastern Seaboard by that time. Hopefully, I won’t have enough money to fly home. They won’t read this, so being rude isn’t a problem. They don’t speak French.

There has been a change in pricing for the excellent Starlink satellite internet service. It has dropped from a hefty 99 euros per month to a more palatable 50 euros per month, with equipment costs of 634 euros. The reduction in price comes with a quid-pro-quo though. The formerly unlimited service now has what is known as a ‘soft data cap’ of 250GB per month. This is still quite generous for most people. Once the cap of 250GB is reached, the service will not stop, but will continue until the end of the billing period at a reduced level. This means slower downloads and uploads. For most users however, this is unlikely to be a problem, meaning that Starlink now seems even better value than before and makes it a far better proposition than the inferior Neosat from Nordnet.

However, a word of caution. Like all satellite internet services, bandwidth will continue to be an issue. As more people take up the service, the more the capacity gets squeezed.

Freesat is not the same as Freeview. Please do not purchase a Freeview box (which is used for terrestrial TV reception in the UK). It will not work with a satellite dish.

I hear that Sky Glass looks very nice. No satellite receiver required, just needs the internet. Can we use it in France? No.

I’m typing this in early September (a quick peep behind the curtain there!) so it may have changed by the time you read this but, if it hasn’t, users of TNTSAT will have found that they no longer have access to the TF1 suite of channels (TF1, TFX, TMC, TF1 Films and LCI). Apparently, it’s all due to a bit of a falling out between TF1 and Canal+. It’s happened before, back in 2018, when the government were forced to throw their weight around a bit and normal service was restored. This will likely happen once again, but as at time of writing, no timescale has been mentioned. You can still get TF1 via a terrestrial aerial or by downloading the ‘MY TF1” app. The service will also still be there if you subscribe to Canal+ or something like Orange or SFR’s internet TV service. It’s only TNTSAT users that are currently affected.

Slightly off-piste, but for those of you with a new fibre modem from Orange, when you try to put in the WiFi password, ignore the spaces that are clearly marked. There are no spaces between the letters/numbers as far as your device is concerned. If you put them in, it will not connect.

Again, not really satellite TV related, but on more than one occasion I have been asked what the ‘ARC’ means when marked on an HDMI socket. Intrigued? I bet you are. So, what does it mean? ARC stands for ‘Audio Return Channel’. This means that if you have a compatible TV and sound system, you no longer need to use an optical cable (which often seems to come loose for some reason) to connect the two. HDMI ARC allows you to connect your devices to the TV (Sat box, Blu-Ray player, Playstation etc) and send the sound back down to something like a soundbar via the HDMI ARC channel. Yes it does a similar job to optical, but it’s often a neater solution. eARC is even better and allows all the very latest sound formats (like Dolby Atmos) to be transmitted.

As always, please feel free to get in touch if you would like any further information or would like to discuss your requirements. Contact details can be found on the advert. Have a great month.

Stuart runs The French House Satellite TV tfhsatellite@gmail.com Other contact details in his advert in the Buildings & Renovations section of the magazine