TV in France

In France last month our Avtex TV tuned its channels perfectly and we had sound but no picture. Once home I did some searching in the web and I am not alone! The "Invalid format" message was telling me that France has switched totally to HD. The Avtex 164 only does SD. In the UK it does not find Ch101, etc. I have not yet contacted Avtex to ask about firmware uogrades but I think I know the answer!

I may be wrong Ron, but I suspect that you'd also require a tuner upgrade.

I know that some manufacturers use replaceable modules, for economies of scale in design and manufacture, but I don't know whether this applies to Avtex.

The alternative is to use an external tuner, either terrestrial HD or a satellite receiver and cheap dish like we did to watch the Euro16 matches in France last month.

Looking at the general spec using avtex 164 as a search term seems to show that it already has a satellite receiver. If this is the case, at least you could watch British FreeSat in France.

Mine is the W164DR. You need tbe DRS fof satellite.
I rang Avtex. No software update is possible and a new tuner card cannot be used as tbe tuner is on the main board. However they will do a PX with around £80 -£100 for my set against a new L188DR at £299 or L187DRS at £349. 188 is latest model just out but not yet available with Satellite. No info on 188 but 187 also plays CDs but not MP3.
An alternative is to plug a USB DVB T2 tuner stick into a laptop at far lower cost!

Get a dish and receiver fellas, our Aldi STB is not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes, stuck to the back of the Kogan TV with one of those rubbery plastic dashboard mats.

Thread drift - are you still interested in the heli parts Peter?

I have a notoriously short attention span, so I'd forgotten about them

Please don't be embarrassed to remind me, or threaten to send the boys round, I want to send them, I just keep forgetting.

meanchris wrote:Get a dish and receiver fellas, our Aldi STB is not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes, stuck to the back of the Kogan TV with one of those rubbery plastic dashboard mats.

What size dish have you found necessary in S France/Spain to get local and or BBC? Bit bothered about bulk in my Nuevo and don't want one on the roof. Dish plus stand can take up a lot of space.

inspiredron wrote:

meanchris wrote:Get a dish and receiver fellas, our Aldi STB is not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes, stuck to the back of the Kogan TV with one of those rubbery plastic dashboard mats.

What size dish have you found necessary in S France/Spain to get local and or BBC? Bit bothered about bulk in my Nuevo and don't want one on the roof. Dish plus stand can take up a lot of space.

A tiny 43cm Aldi dish worked fine all the way down to Chatelaillon Plage and as far east as Limoges, using a sat finder app to set the dish.

The skew of the dish can be critical, you have to set it accurately for each location to get a full channel spread across all the transponders. It's easy to think that there's no signal because you've got the skew wrong and you're missing several channels, and then give up.

I'm thinking of a bit further down than that and was expecting an 80cm dish.

Ouch! I was not thinking of spending £600 on an aerial. But thanks for the map.

Get a smaller dish and a roll of kitchen foil to make it bigger...

Seriously though, there's no definitive line to be drawn where EM propagation is concerned, there'l be places that it should work but doesn't and places where it's impossible, but does work.

My stepson lives near Bremen, where there's a definite 'null' in the Astra UK footprint, and I was able to point his 90cm dish (after he moved house a few miles) without a signal meter or even a compass, and get a full FreeSat bouquet with HD channels from the new satellite.

As I said, we were getting FreeSat through mid France with a tiny Aldi dish, not a 60cm one.
If you think about it, you're just as likely to have no terrestrial signal on remote sites as you are to have a poor satellite signal.

There's very little chance of Astra FreeSat in Spain any more, even with a bigger (monster) dish, but France isn't too bad.
You don't have to spend £2000, just around £50-£120 to give it a try - or £300 for the Avtex TVs

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Ross-HD-Portable-Satellite-Kit-/122049367215?hash=item1c6ab58caf:g:~pYAAOSwIgNXjOzw

Our TV never even came out of it's box when we were in France this year , but previously I had excellent results with a Maxview Crankup dish.

Not too expensive, and with it's calibrations to help, and experience (as Peter intimated) of how many turns of the handle to acquire the correct elevation at various latitudes, I could almost guarantee to be watching a programme within a minute - two at the most, unless we were in a null spot of course!!

Even then I was so confident of the dish that after a very few minutes of fiddling I gave up, knowing that it was neither me nor the equipment at fault.

Dave

Peter Brown wrote:When you have a good 'nose' for the satellite location, those little dishes are ok.  I've set up several for owners to prove that it does work but even then, first timers rarely manage to align them themselves.  You have much more tolerance with a bigger dish when learning and it will work further south and east when you get good at it.

There are some good android phone or tablet apps to help you, I used this one this year:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.esys.satfinder&hl=en_GB

The only problem then is the unreliability of a phone's electronic compass, I recommend an old fashioned magnetic one to check against.

Ron, why not buy a separate 12V receiver, 60cm dish with a folding LNB arm and a tripod; you could potentially store the dish somewhere on the roof if you have rack bars?

Thanks for all the comments, folks. I don't have roof bars and there is nowhere left on the roof unless I swap it for the Teleco terrestrial aerial so I need to measure locker space. I reckon 60cm will be OK, 80cm will be a challenge. I am much heartened by comments re 60cm and smaller. Worth a punt with a tripod. That is how mist Dutch do it AFAIK.
Thanks, again.

Just remember a couple of things Ron, it'll help you when you're having problems:

Finding the Azimuth and Elevation isn't that difficult. Once you've managed it the first few times, and with the help of an app and compass, you'll get the feel for it.

Most Important:
A good SKEW is everything, you have to adjust it specifically for your lat/long location.
If you don't, then you can be fooled into thinking that there's no signal, when it's just some of the transponders missing and you've happened to choose one of those channels to use as a datum.
I've watched people give up because they have the skew completely the wrong/opposite way, even though I could hear their sat finder whistling away with a strong signal. (I helped of course)

Peter, does the crank up handle of your satellite dish have to be immediately below the dish, or can it be placed in a more convenient location because of space.

Sorry if it sounds a daft question.

Leighton.