Great forum-just have a quick question regards Cablecom digital installation for those who have been there and done it!

I am moving into a new apartment in Lausanne having been in temp accommodation. Have looked through the various theads-Sky looks out of the question as I don't have a balcony. So left with cablecom subscription or going through 'telereseau lausannois' and purchasing their SWISSFUN decoder to pick up som extra English channels (BBC 1, 2)

Looks like cablecom digital is the best option as it also carries ITV 1 and 2 and they are running a promotion at the minute. I was wondering if there were any specific installation procedures for digital cablecom i.e. does a guy need to come into the apartment and install the receiver and cable or is it all done remotely with the box sent through the post? If so, would be interested to know people's experience in terms of time taken to get everything up and running from the time they registered.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Cablecom will send you the receiver. All you need to be sure of is that the apartment has a cable connection. I'd be surprised if it didn't, but you never know.

If the apartment does not have a cable connection, I don't know who you would have to contact to have one installed.

If the apartment does have cable and you would like to enjoy the payment free advantages that a satelite dish would have to offer, then I suggest doing some research into installing a Dreambox.

There is a lot of information on this forum regarding the advantages of a Dreambox installation (like being able to receive all cable channels for free).

It does require a few extra steps, in other words to do this you would have to go beyond 'out of the box', but not too far beyond.

If you are in any way technically inclined, then it would be equal to downloading and installing software.

Check out this thread.

IF you go on the Cablecom website you can give in the details of your apartment and it will tell you if you are connected and capable of receiving a digital quality signal. If you are then simply apply. If not then simply apply but ... In this case you will not simply receive the box, instead a process will start in the background to have your apartment block "upgraded". This will be transparent to you unless the owner of the apartment block refuses to accept the additional cost this will incur. If I am not mistaken it is something like SFr 2 per month and apartment so it is not a given although by far the majority of apartment owners see the advantage. In the latter case expect a delay of ca 2 months. Note also that in this case a dreambox will not work...

Thanks for the info-checking out the Dreambox option although I'm worried about the risk of forking out 400 CHF and it not working. Do you know of any channel listings the Dreambox hacks into in Switz?

Cheers

APP

First off, you shouldn't pay more than about 280-300 chf for a 500c. Unless of course you're buying with a Gemini image installed. Then the convenience is probably worth it if you're not confident enough to do DIY.

Then check out this thread on i-have-a-dreambox.com. A mate of mine gets his Swiss channel listings through a Greek channel.

Is this something that a foreigner who doesn't know how the systems works really wants to do? According to cablecom.ch the apartment I will move to in just over a month's time does not have hi-speed net or digital phone services, but DOES have digital TV. I'm not quite sure how that works, since I was led to believe that, in order to get cable net access, one only needed to have the cable already installed. And how else is the digital TV accessible than through the cable...? Or perhaps, since digital TV implies the cable is already installed, the lack of hi-speed net access means that getting cablecom to put this in place will require less time/work than otherwise (i.e. a hardware install outside of the apartment block only)..? Any thoughts on that idea?

I had the same problem so I was forced to sign up with Citycable and they dont have all the British Channels I wanted, so now looking for an alternative. For the moment I am using Online Streaming on my laptop which is ok.

Hey Swissaholic,

Have you considered Bluewin TV from Swisscom? They have BBC 1–4 and ITV 1–4, plus a few other English channels and all the local ones, too. We have our TV, phone and internet in a bundle package, and it's actually not a bad deal. The TV costs I think 19 CHF a month for 120 channels. We also managed to save a few chuffs by cancelling our cable connection completely. We ordered everything online, our stuff arrived in the mail, and we did the installation ourselves. Easy peasy. (Or so says she whose husband actually did all the work.)

Anywho.

Heather

Unfortunately, out of fear or not having an internet connection (is there an Internetic Anonymous?) I signed up to Citycable for a year as the apartment i moved into already had a connection with them. I did check what they had to offer and noticed that they did have quite a few British Channels but as the website is all French I didn't realise that I needed a special decoder (Swissfun) to watch all the British Channels - the HD receiver in my TV isnt good enough. So I'll be off hunting for this Swissfun Decoder this weekend (not much on the net about it actually so I hope I don't end up with a lemon for the 200Chf. From what I gather Nokia makes it but Im not able to find out any specs from their website.. hmm).