So I'm interested to read here about the free French TNT service which wasn’t there last time I looked. Apparenty you have to get a dedicated box and card. I see one French dealer is offering an "Aston Simba TNT sat HD digital satellite receiver" and a "Sagem DTR 94160S HD Satellite and PVR Receiver".

Has anyone got any experience with any of these TNT HD receivers?

I see it seems to be a 19°E service at present limited for 4 years after activation. There seems to be a suggestion that you can also get it (including the HD channels) for an unrestricted time from 5°W but I'm not sure I’ve got that right. Anyone know?

I ordered a BIS card a few days ago to go in my fixed dish array system (19°E, 13°E, 28°E) which operates on an old Force receiver. According to something I received from the French dealer, on BIS - "Nous tenons cependant à vous informer que l'opérateur BIS a pris la décision, afin d'améliorer son contenu tant au niveau de la qualité que du nombre de chaînes, de transmettre ses programmes via Hot Bird au format MPEG4 et ce à partir du 1/01/11. Si vous recevez BIS via Atlantic Bird 3 à 5°ouest, vous pourrez continuer à utiliser votre récepteur MPEG2 DVBS.
A ce titre nous vous prions de bien vouloir vérifier la compatibilité de votre récepteur avec le standard MPEG2/4 DVBS et DVBS2."

I hear that people have been having trouble with French channel TF1 very recently but maybe that's not a problem with a pucka Viacess CAM of recent vintage?

I think I'm going to add a 5°W 80cm to my fixed dish array if it can be physically done here. I guess I'd use a twin LNB and with one going into the Force Disecq (sp?) switch and one coming all the way in for possible use on one of these TNT receivers or alternatively an old analogue receiver though I keep hearing the 5W analogue service is to go - always "soon". Or maybe a quad LNB so that two could go to one of these TNT boxes...


The other matter is that I want to revive my old 1.2m motorised Unicorn for which I just ordered a Technomate 8000 and a V box. I'm hoping that receiver was a good decision? (It used to be driven by an Echostar LT which broke.) I’m getting that professionally installed as I don't trust my level of expertise with it.