tv reception in europe

Our four year old Avtex tuned into French terrestrial TV OK in September this year.

Is your TV full HD, many older smaller TV's are not, Avtex being an exception. It is possible that European channels have switched to HD and turned analogue off which might be the reason why you can't get a picture despite getting a strong signal? 

David

Sounds to me as though you were picking up the wrong satellite, probably Astra 1 which is close to Astra 2 and over there would be stronger than Astra 2.

peedee

DK is right, most European countries have gone over to hd so you should get terrestrial tv with an hd tv. If you're talking satellite tv, that would depend on how south you travel. In Spain for example when I was near Alicante I could tune in just about with a 1.2 metre dish but when I went to southern Murcia that dish dish was redundant. Luckily the site had a 3.6 metre dish!

JK

You can still get UK SD channels on satellite allbeit not as many as say a year ago. BBC Channel Isle is still SD, think the deadline for switch off is March 2024. We still have a non HD TV, yet to be replaced, in use.

peedee

P.S. Just checked and the BBC is moving the shut down date forward to January 8th

I think you are confusing Astra 1 with Eurobird. Astra 1 is a full 9 degrees away from Astra 2 so it should be easy to distinguish. Eurobird is at 25.5 degrees east which is less than 3 degrees away from Astra 2.

Possible Lutz, it is just more usual for UK mobile satellite equipment to be set up to receive Astra 1 and 2. I know when I used to set up manually with a sat finder, it was usually Astra 1 which I got by mistake. When panning from south Astra 1 comes up first. Even now with my auto set up, on the continent it has a habit of locking onto Astra 1 rather than 2 and I have to initiate another search. The further south and east I go the worse it is to lock onto 2.

peedee

thanks everyone for your replies. I think its time for a more up to date tv.

Parny you need to confirm whether you're trying to get satellite tv or DTV digital TV in Europe...the 'help' will be completely different.

its also possible to get tv delivered via the internet....iplayer, itvx etc...

when looking to tune in to DTV, the menu will usually ask you for the country you're in....it certainly checks we are in the uk when retuning here after a move of location.

you need to understand the problem before working the solution.

it's perfectly possible that your tv is fine

I automatically assumed that if you were using a signal finder on the Continent you would be looking for a satellite signal. On reflection that may not be the case but personally I have never had much luck using terrestial TV over there,especially in France and Spain.

peedee