My partner and I are moving to Luzern early next year for work and have decided we may make the bold (and very post-modern) move of having no television.
A very romantic idea in theory, but I work in the television industry currently (as a journalist) and am moving sideways into a different (but still media based) profession in Switzerland. So in reality, it is important for me professionaly to have some sort of access to ENGLISH speaking television at home.
We would probably only need to get BBC World and/or CNN so are reluctant to spend money on a full cable television subscription.
What do most people on here do in this situation? We were considering getting a large screen for our computer and watching news bulletins etc online when needed.
Thoughts/advice?
And I guess while I am here, how cheap (or otherwise) is unlimited broadband in Switzerland?
I managed to survive my first year at least without a tv and then about another 6 months with only the swiss channels.
You know getting cablecom costs next to nothing compared to sky tv back in ireland or england. Think I pay 20chf per month for 100's of channels (all of them pointless except for one or two swiss ones and my 10 or so english channels). I think its a worthwhile expense as its nice to be able chill in the evenings. You might not find it so romantic when there is no distraction to distract from the mood of a fight at home
There is also bluewin tv which you can get through swisscom and watch on your computer.
You can also watch bbc tv online through their website but I think you need to have a british IP address for this. There are ways and means of getting this done though.
Either way good luck and I hope you enjoy the move.
Have you thought about using a freesat box or the full sky setup. You shouldn't have a problem with reception in Luzern, it will just take a little perseverance if you are going to set it up yourself or some money to get a specialist in. One sure fire way of comfirming if you have reception where you are is to head down to the local English/Irish bar and see if they have Sky there for the football.
The freesat box with built in recorder will set you back about £150.
The other benifit of going down the satellite route is that you can pick up English radio too.
We have a large screen for the computer and watch bits and pieces online. The disadvantage is it tends to become a solitary activity. We have a tiny tv set for our child to watch cartoons and so on in German, but we have cable only, and CNN is the only thing we have in English, not our style, so we get no use out of the tv ourselves at all. And apart from not really watching cable but having to pay anyway, we have to pay Billag for the right to watch tv or even listen to the radio. We never had to pay so much and recieve so little before. Before you could at least get some more international channels included, but now you must pay extra.
Do it! Go TV free! I can't help with any of the technical details, but I will say that even for a news junkie like me it has been so good not having a TV. We have a large screen for our computer and watch movies etc on that, but, to be honest, there really aren't enough hours in the day to to do all the things we want to do and watch too many movies. As for internet access to news reports etc, there must be ways to get what you want without a TV.
I think no matter what your profession, not having a TV means you will be able to concentrate more on what you would like to be doing instead of finding that you just don't have enough time because you end up watching stuff you weren't that fussed about seeing in the first place.
I know a lot of people also like to use TV for practicing German but you can do that with DVDs as well.
If you have broadband, you can access Zattoo on your PC and watch these free English language channels: BBC-One, BBC-World, CNN, ITV-1, CNBC, EuroNews, France24 and AlJazerra.
I use cablecom digital TV and have 11 x full-time English TV channels, plus loads of programs on SF2 are broadcast in dual language, which means for me that the English language is automatically selected.
Plus I have 18 x full-time English radio stations on the cable TV
And that's the basic package, no add-ons.
I have more English program choice in radio and TV here in Switzerland than I did when I lived in a native English speaking country !!
And I have 15Mbps download speeds on my cable connection. Highest currently is 25Mbps, and next year it goes to 100 Mbps
I installed and watch Zattoo last night. It initally told me when I tried to do the download that I was not in a valid country. I went to the FAQs and followed the link that is there to identify where your IP is stationed. It confirmed Switzerland so I went back to the download page and it worked. Within a few minutes I was watching it on my TV which is hooked up to my PC.
The bad news (and there is two pieces of bad news)
1. No remote control!! Destroys the whole zapping experience!
2. After living on and off in Switzerland since 20 years I now realise that I am suppose to pay Billag for the use of the TV and Radio! I did a scan of the threads on this topic last night after seeing the posts below. Damn! Now I know about it I am not going to sleep at night wondering if they are coming to get me.
Thank you all for the helpful information! Sounds like Zattoo is a fairly good option! See what you mean about it being a solitary viewing thing...but I guess if we mount the monitor in a good position we could technically watch it from a distance with two people.
So in short you pay a fee to have normal TV in Switzerland and then added cost on top of that for extra international channels?
I've been browsing a bit lately with this thread question in the back of mind -- and noticed in particular the threads which mention most swiss apartments have a standard Cable TV connection that you would have to switch off if you didn't want it.
In particular I was interested to note that these standard connections (according to most posts) include TV and Internet.
Which begs the question - if I want cable internet, will I automatically get cable TV too? If yes, I guess part of my original question becomes null and void.
I could use Zattoo to access the channels I need which aren't provided in the basic package...but still have TV with standard channels for no significant extra cost.
Am I reading the situation correctly? Also, how do I decipher the packages on the Cablecom website? Here in Australia packages are generally based on limited v unlimited access...here it appears it's based on speed..does that mean all have unlimited download?