Is there a French equivalent to BBC iPlayer, so has a wide range of content including live TV and free?
I would like to be able to watch French TV occasionally to help with learning French but unfortunately we do not have a TV aerial - hence looking for online content.
Thanks
Molotov TV
France.tv does the trick. Free sign up.
Mat, as well as the replay facilities on the station websites (they all have them), there is a lot available on YouTube, with often the possibility of (auto-generated, sometimes unreliable) subtitles.
Thanks for the reminder about Arte, @Fleur - my partner has a tv in his little house but we can’t get TV here at all so I’ve learned to live without it but he mainly watches Arte live there. As we live normally at the end of 3 km of wet string serving as a phone/“broadband” connection, I often find that Youtube is so stuttery it is unwatchable, even when the quality isn’t awful, but Arte has some wonderful programmes so well worth a try 
There are YouTube downloaders available. You download the stream and then can watch it without stutter. Not strictly legal, of course …
I just registered for Arte - very nice content. Just watched Sting play in the Pantheon, It allowed me to cast it to my TV to fully enjoy the experience. It is definitely now on my list to visit 
You’re right Angela. I like it because you can stream programmes you missed earlier in the day/week/month, or even longer. And it always works on our setup : an iPhone streaming to TV, even though our ADSL débit isn’t very high. They have quite a lot of science or history programmes with a French voice translating where experts are speaking English. Maybe those are BBC productions. I think there are progs all in English too. They also have some quite quirky non mainstream films in VO. Tonight we’re planning to watch The Social Network, director David Fincher (2010), writer Aaron Sorkin (West Wing), adapted from the book The Accidental Billionaires, about the founding of Facebook and the resulting lawsuits.
I’m using 5KPlayer. Seems to work well. I didn’t know it was illegal
The deal with youtube is that you don’t posses the content on your drives, but may stream it. Of course any data that can be encoded into a stream can be captured - youtube frequently tweak to break the recorders, which are then often quickly fixed again.
The issue with copyright in this kind of situation is clear legally, but not so obvious morally, since you just want to watch the content FOC, which is what youtube provides. I have a few films that I’ve downloaded, in one case because the DVD I had simply would not work and I just found the movie & downloaded it so I could watch.
This is of course different from the various ***locker sites that host full length DVD titles for download illegally.
The sign up now seems to be obligatory, at least on our Mi TV stick, but wasn’t until the end of last week. Annoyingly, the app now gives you a QR code that the Mi TV doesn’t recognise, even when you click on it…
For live TV I find Molotov to be great. I’ve installed it on 2 Amazon Fire Sticks. I don’t have the premium version, just the freebie one. I particularly like that if a program has already started it gives you the option to start watching it from the beginning. It’s no good for catch up TV though.
Do these things need a tv licence if streamed or not watched on an actual tv? I’ve not bothered with tv for several years but wonder if I should restart
I too watch France TV’s Pluzz site on my laptop. Great for improving language skills - I watch various detective series with subtitles which I can pause to look up words and phrases I don’t know on Deepl, Reverso etc. https://www.france.tv/
If no actual TV device, no tv license is needed.
We use Molotov TV extensively, and have the paid version with HD quality (3,99€/month). Very convenient to “record” movies, series, etc. and watch later on TV, computer, tablet. Molotov TV works also abroad when traveling (in EU countries).
From the service public website:
Les matériels concernés sont les suivants :
Les micro-ordinateurs munis d’une carte télévision permettant la réception ne sont pas taxables.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, as we have a TV we have to pay the redevance télé (license) … even though we have no dish/aerial/nuffink to bring us any programs.
We use the TV for our dvd’s and videos (we have quite a collection…).
There is also the point that some content is not covered by copyright because it’s too old and is thus in the “public domain”. I’m no expert, but I think it’s 50 years. So maybe old films are not affected?
Arte’s superb, one of its features that I really appreciate is that many programmes (mainly in French and German) are available with french subtitles (I can easily read french, but am much worse at following spoken french).
Secondly, France 24 has news and very good current affairs in French and English - one can watch the news in English and then get a similar bulletin in French with a different presenter, which is very good for tuning the ear to everyday spoken French.