Contents of article "TNT (Télévision Numérique Terrestre)"
TNT (Télévision Numérique Terrestre)
All you need to know
New channels available
TNT (Télévision Numérique Terrestre)
Known as "La Télévision Numérique pour Tous" (*digital television for all)
TNT has been available in the Pyrenees-Orientales Since October 2006, for those within reception distance of the Pic Neoulous.
As a result of a joint venture between public broadcaster France Televisions and a number of cable and satellite operators, there are now a further 11 free viewing channels available on French television. All you need is a ’boitier de décodage’ (TNT decoder box) which you should now be able to buy from any electrical shop throughout the department for around 40 - 50€. Also available are double boxes which allow you to watch one channel whilst recording another.
All you need to know
What you need to ensure good reception.....
Your present televion aerial should be adequate.
TNT box (available now in most TV/electrical shops)
Click here to check if you are able to receive the new channels
New channels available
LCP Assemblée Nationale
Political debates, reports and documentaries
France 4
Cinema, sport, fiction, music....
Direct8
Culture, cinema, society on this channel which claims to be all live broadcasts
NT1
General - children’s programmes, soaps.......
NRJ
Music, talk shows, games........
Gulli
Young people’s channel (6 - 14) cartoons, games, discovery ........
i tele
24 hour news channel
BFM TV
24 hour news channel
Public Sénat
Political debates, reports and documentaries
W9
Music, action, relaxation..
TMC Monte Carlo
Family entertainment
Europe2 TV
Music channel
For the ’teckies’ amongst you
*Digital television is based on the idea of recording information in a digital, rather than an analogue format. The idea is to reduce the information to a series of electronic signals, which can be written in a code of 0’s and 1’s. This ’binary code’ is the way computers ’talk’ to each other. It is preferable to magnetic tape, the analogue method of storing information, as there is less likelihood of corrupting the signal and the information is stored on formats like Compact Discs which are more durable than the traditional magnetic tape.
The idea of digital recording has been around for a long time. The IBA ( the forerunner of the Independent Television Commision) licenced the first digital tape recorder in the early 1980’s. However the first advance in recording was an improved analogue system, BetaCam. This was a component analogue system where the information was split up into colour and luminance, stored on separate tracks. It gave a higher picture quality, but was overtaken in the early 1990’s by digital systems, such as DigiBetaCam. These give an even better picture and make editing with on-line computer systems possible.
In the television industry the use of DVC and DVD (Digital Video Cassette and Digital Video Disk) are widespread. This means that recording has recently been standardized again. The broadcast industry standard is now MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Experts Group standard 2). This cuts the amount of information from nearly 100 million ’bits’ per second to less then 5 million. It does this by not specifying the information for each individual pixel, but rather the boundaries of groups of pixels of the same colour and brightness.
The use of digital technology in recording television is now quite established - the present phase is the broadcasting of it - already widespread in England but fairly recently arrived in France
