Live Television

When we bought La Matha, it came already fitted with two satellite dishes - one angled to pick up French satellite TV and one for UK TV.  This worked well, as we had a "Freesat" digibox, which could pick up all the UK free to view channels.

Then, someone in charge of Astra 2, the satellite transmitting the UK TV signal decided that they should narrow the transmission beam so that it only covered the UK.  This meant that we could no longer watch any UK TV.  If we wanted to watch French TV, we would have to buy a different digibox and connect it to the other dish.  We weren't that interested in French TV, though.

The solution was internet TV.  We subscribed to a VPN provider called "My Expat TV", which made it look as though you were using the internet in the UK.  This, together with a Now TV box, we were able to watch BBC, ITV etc through iPlayer, ITV Hub and so on.  We could also use our Amazon Prime account with our laptop.  This was OK up to a point; however, in the evenings, the broadband speed was so slow (probably with the extra routing required) that it was virtually impossible to watch.

That was fine for about 18 months, but then, the UK TV companies got wise to the commercial VPN providers, and now block their IP addresses.  Therefore, this avenue is now closed.

As a result, we have now given up on providing any form of TV service.  There is a good television there, and we will be installing a blu-ray player if visitors want to take their own HD or normal DVDs.  You can also use a laptop - there is a spare HDMI cable to connect.

This is a shame; however, we'd like to think that our visitors will be spending their evenings enjoying lovely meals on the terrace, casually (and responsibly!) drinking local wine, rather than glued to the TV!