Can anyone please suggest a French Internet Service Provider whose internet TV box is simple and elegant to use? I have tried both Orange TV and Free TV over internet however they both have horrendous remote controls and flaky, difficult menus to navigate - a pipe dream perhaps however I am highly motivated to find an operator that offers a solution which is as intuitive, quick and simple to use as a Sky+ box/remote. All comments are welcome. Thanks, James.
I switched from Sky to Freesat using a Sagem decoder and the user interface on that is crap too !
The Liveplug thingies work fine here & give good tele which seldom freezes.
Yes, the old LiveBoxes required the dish, and I am not sure whey we are still connected. However, the Liveplug system does not work anyway because of the line speeds. The same dish is used for Hotbird/Eutelsat reception to our other decoder and then we have another dish and decoder for the Freesat. Whatever the odds, our French TV does not work.
Now I'm confused! We have French tele. from our Livebox. The Livebox is connected via an Ethernet cable to a Liveplug which transmits the signal via the house wiring to another Liveplug which in turn is connected to the Orange decoder box with another Ethernet cable. The decoder connects to the tele. with a scart lead. With me so far?;-) Where does a dish come onto the equation? We have a satellite dish for English tele. via. Freesat decoders.
Our French TV packed up, we had an Orange technician out. He turned up with a replacement LiveBox under his arm free of charge, fiddled around trying to realign our dish, tune into the LiveBox and eventually admitted defeat. Orange had not believed we had had somebody out before that who did no better until their guy came. He told us that Orange could no nothing and that we needed a new line provided by France Telecom. When one of FT's people came past bashing the pylons with some kind of hammer for whatever reason, we grabbed him and asked about new lines. He snorted down his nose and told us effectively not to hold our breath. We are still without French TV unless we tune in to it on Zattoo.
Hi Brian - many thanks for your considered response; the problem we have is not line speed (which is acceptable) but the operating system and user interface provided by Orange/Free on their TV boxes. My desire is to obtain a user experience with French TV that comes close to that of the well-executed Sky+ box for UK channels. Cheers, James.
James, we have Zattoo, other people use FilmOn. We are streaming using a box whereas other people are using smart TVs direct from their LiveBox or modem. Much of the problem is not the ISPs but line speeds. Our telephone line was probably laid by Methuselah and line speeds drop down to well below those required for decent streaming. We have had threads on this recently, if you find one of them and read through it you will certainly get the message. It is not your provider, so it is not worth changing and even going on your knees to France Telecom who own the lines is a total waste of time and energy. Quite a few departments are promising to upgrade to fibre optics soon, but here for example it is anything between six and X years before it will happen. I wish it was better news than that but better you know than frustrate yourself changing from one company and another who omit to tell you the real situation and happily take your money from you.