h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Spiff Believe it or not I have just found the French Connection.There are a lot of ideas but they do not seem to have jelled yet. I saw your note about how to type a cedilla. Could I suggest that perhaps you could give a sheet of references to the various accents and how to type them; and of course the circumflex, if possible. We might be able to use the English keyboard in order to type in French. I know that my emails to my relatives in France would look far better correctly accented and you would be doing us all a favour. Another point which could be clarified is whether we can get French TV in England. It seems quite ridiculous that one does not seem able to do it. I have SKY but when I asked the SKY engineer who installed it whether I would be able to get French TV he told me I would only be able to receive German TV as we share the same satellite - I think it is called ASTRA. Seems odd.Good luck in your venture. You have my full support and whatever I can do to help I shall do willingly. Sinceerely. AR1

Hiya,

I am a ten-finger typist who can use qwerty or azerty, though it takes a bit of time to change over when I move from one country to the other.

Watch this space for a guide entry on typing accents with a UK keyboard - great idea, thanks!

As for the telly, can't help you too much. I *do* have a (brit) friend in France who picks up the Sky sattelite channel, but don't know how to do it the other way round. Sorry,

seeya
spiff

Hi Spiff A great many mercis for the work you are going to do for us. How about remembering all the oldies in French light music like Charles Trenet, Jean Sablon and Edith Piaf? And of course the magnificent, superb Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Wonderful memories flood back ! Regards. AR1 the Venerable but mobile

I'm probably more into the later stuff - fifties onwards I guess.

Love George Brassens, Serge G, Brel, and many more. So many potential sure-fire guide entries there!

gotta go

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spiff

Hmm, how to get French TV in England...

It is possible, there are a few problems however...

Firstly, French Satellite transmissions bounce of a different satellite than Sky

Sky uses ASTRA whereas the French system uses EUTELSAT - which is in a different part of the sky, so you'd either need two different satellite dishes, a motorised satellite dish or a satellite dish with two pick-up heads (not a good idea as they don't work very well)

Alternatively, every time you wanted to change from SKY to TPS (Télévision Par Satellite) you'd have to climb up on your roof and move your dish...

Secondly, like Sky, TPS signals are all encrypted, you've got to pay for them, so you'd need one of their set-top boxes and one of their decoder cards (I've honestly no idea if a SKY set-top box would work with their decoder card).

The problem with getting their equipment would be that the French company will not have a license to broadcast to the UK - although you can pick up the transmissions, they aren't allowed to sell a decoder card to someone with an English Address so the only way to get around this is to find a French Address, have the equipment installed there and then have it moved to the UK (PS This would break the terms and conditions of the agreement with the French Company, and if they found out they'd cancel your subscription)


A slightly cheaper way of hearing French spoken on TV is, if you've got SKY digital, you should have an on screen menu somewhere offering you a choice of languages, if you change the default value to French, most of the channels will still be in English, but some, European channels (Eurosport, Euronews etc.) will then be in French.

Hope that helps a little


whisky

Looking at the question from the other side, I have a friend in Strazzer who picks up the Sky satellite channels and is registered as a customer in the UK to avoid the same problems with being a customer living abroad.

Not too with it this Saturday am, for some inexplicable reason...


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spiff