Sony Bravia purchased in France to bring to UK / Youview

[theoellis]

Hello all. I need some advice and wondering if anyone can help. I am currently living in France and intend to purchase a Sony Bravia to use here for the next 18 months. My question is, upon my return to the UK, asides from having to use a mains power adapter, will I be able to access the inbuilt on demand features such as iPlayer, ITVX through the YOUVIEW configuration, or will a French Bravia be completely differently pre-programmed? Is it possible to reinstall the firmware once I return, so that the TV is completely UK operational with YOUVIEW inbuilt (as if it was purchased in the UK) , is it simply a case of changing the region settings and being connected via a UK internet connection or is it not that straight forward? Youview is very important to me and I don't want to spend in the region of a grand if it isn't an option when I'm back home. Appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance

[royabrown2]

@theoellis 

Why don’t you buy a UK TV now, and see how it gets on in France, instead of the other way round?

France uses 230 volts, so you don’t need a mains power adaptor, just a plug converter, such as a UK person might buy to plug their UK appliances into a French mains socket.

Also Europe uses DVB-T only, even for HD programmes, whereas the UK uses DVB-T2 for HD. If you get a French set, it may not have a DVB-T2 tuner in it - I got caught by bringing a Spanish Samsung to the UK, where this happened, so while I could get UK SD programmes just fine on it, I couldn’t get any HD ones.

Conversely, though, I took a YouView box to Spain, and it could get all the channels there were, including the HD ones coming over DVB-T, and it rendered them in HD - you could see the difference between the SD and HD versions of the same channel, so the YouView box was doing HD over DVB-T just fine. Chances are a UK Sony TV will do this too, in France.

Finally, I don’t think YouView will be possible on a French TV; there needs to be stuff built-in, I think, and only UK-market TVs will have this. I could be wrong about this, but I would hate to be right.

So don’t raise the bridge - lower the river, so to speak!