TV CABLE DISTRIBUTORS IN FINLAND

[GoHabsGo]

Hello,

Will be moving to Helsinki this coming August. We are North Americans and would love to be able to view TV programs in English. Which cable tv distributor or satellite distributor would one recommend in which we could watch tv shows, movies and International Sporting events coming from the USA, Canada and Europe and that there are many English speaking shows? May you also provide me with website links if possible. Thanks so much.

[Upphew]

Hello,

Will be moving to Helsinki this coming August. We are North Americans and would love to be able to view TV programs in English. Which cable tv distributor or satellite distributor would one recommend in which we could watch tv shows, movies and International Sporting events coming from the USA, Canada and Europe and that there are many English speaking shows? May you also provide me with website links if possible. Thanks so much.

Dubbing is only done to the programs aimed to small children. All the other programs that are done in English are shown in English, with captions.

netflix.com

as for sports... nhl.com, nfl.com etc should have options to watch online (for a fee).

[Jukka Aho]

Will be moving to Helsinki this coming August. We are North Americans and would love to be able to view TV programs in English.

As noted by Upphew, subtitles (closed captions) are the main mode of TV / movie / DVD / Blu-Ray translation for the Finnish audiences, except for shows targeting children below the reading age. Getting to hear the original audio track is the norm here, most of the time. Also, free-to-air Finnish channels broadcast many shows which are only available for a fee on HBO etc. in the US. All in all, a high percentage of the programming on the free main channels originates from English-speaking countries (such as the US, UK, Canada, and Australia) and is broadcast with the original audio track.

That said, many locally-broadcast US shows lag several seasons behind their original US airing dates. There are also some notable exceptions to getting the original audio track: documentaries are often narrated in Finnish even if the on-screen speakers are subtitled (captioned). Also, the live sports events broadcast on the main channels usually feature commentary in Finnish and Swedish, not in English. Additional/premium sports channels you get on cable tend to have English narration as one of the alternative audio tracks you can choose using your remote, though.

Which cable tv distributor or satellite distributor would one recommend in which we could watch tv shows, movies and International Sporting events coming from the USA, Canada and Europe and that there are many English speaking shows? May you also provide me with website links if possible. Thanks so much.

As for cable, you're typically tied to a single distributor only: the one which happens to own the local cable infrastructure in the area where you live. (Typically Elisa, Sonera, DNA, or some smaller local telco.)

In urban zones, houses - especially residential buildings owned and managed by housing coops - usually subscribe to basic cable service by default: the cable signal is provided to each apartment by the local cable company. You pay for the service in your rent or maintenance fee and can't opt out. In rural areas, coops typically maintain a communal antenna and run a similar RF distribution system with amplifiers etc. providing a signal to all the apartments. ("Rabbit ears" reception is rare in Finland - it's nearly always a proper antenna on the roof, a distribution amp, and several coaxial cable runs to the different rooms, with the cables hidden inside the drywalls and terminated to Belling-Lee type IEC RF wall jacks.)

If you're on cable, you can typically get more channels by buying a viewing card and subscribing to premium channel packages. If you get your TV signal via an antenna - communal or not - it's much the same: there are distributors (such as PlusTV) who provide scrambled, premium over-the-air channels and allow viewing them by means of a separately purchased viewing card and subscription. Due to limited over-the-air bandwidth reserved for TV broadcasts, the selection is not much, though.

The basic set of must-carry channels you get "for free" (both via over-the-air reception and on cable) comprises of some 13+ channels (the ones marked with green on the linked page and which do not include the word "radio" in their description text), but basic cable typically adds a handful of more. (Actually, nothing's free: there's a TV tax which funds the public broadcaster YLE. For the longest time, there used to be a separate TV license and door-to-door license inspectors harassing those who had not registered as TV viewers but this scheme was recently turned into a compulsory tax paid by everyone except minors and those in the lowest income classes.)

When it comes to satellite reception, the main contenders are Canal Digital and Viasat. It should be noted that while there numerous satellite channels targeted to European viewers, many of them serve them in their local languages (German, French, etc.) and distribution rights issues might prevent buying a subscription to non-free / premium packages not specifically targeted at Finland and Finnish viewers. Or the transponder coverage might be such that you need a big dish and an unobstructed line of sight to south to be able to receive them. That said, there are apparently people who have managed to buy e.g. a Sky subscription through a proxy and view those channels in Finland.

Some companies, such as Maxivision, also offer IP-based subscription TV via your broadband connection. You get a box which you will connect both to your TV and to your local network.

Last but not least, many view foreign TV channels (or stream recorded TV shows) from their country of origin, directly via the Internet. But since such services (think of Hulu etc.) are often geographically restricted, they need to do this via commercial or privately set up proxies or VPN services which masquerade their true IP address. The commercial VPN services have recently come under fire as the credit card companies have been pressured (by Hollywood etc.) into not accepting payments directed to them (so as not to facilitate circumventing geographical blocks and geographically limited distribution deals.) Technical persons can of course set up a proxy on their own by various means or stream channels live using commercial products such as the Slingbox.

So there are numerous options and alternatives available, and you get various popular US/UK shows in English on the basic, "free" channels without having to do anything about it, but if you want your "actual" US TV, you need to resort to streaming it over the Internet, either via a VPN (be that bought as a service or set up and hosted by yourself or a sufficiently technically-minded friend or relative) and/or products like the Slingbox.

[richard berman]

Hello

I have this set up at home and love it, it is a box that plugs into your modem and then into the back of the TV that is it, and then you sit back with your remote control and use it like any other digi box and its only 20€ a month. http://watchbritishtelevision.com/

Cheers

Richard