Cable TV and Internet

Ok, I know there's a lot of articles out there on this topic but I can't find a good answer for my issue. Perhaps I'm not seeing it, but here's my question...

I just moved into a house in Planegg (in Munich) and the owner of the house told me that we are already paying for "Kable" or cable and that it includes about 36 channels. She said we only have to plug our TV into the wall outlet. Ok, so I did that with an old TV that my brother-in-law lent us and I'm only seeing at most 11 channels or so. None of these are in English.

So what am I missing here? Do I need a cable box of some sort? Do I need to get that from an electronic store?

The other problem is that I ordered internet/phone from Arcor and that's been a LONG and PAINFUL story that is not finished yet - no internet or phone yet but somehow Arcor has a phone # setup for us already but needs to still have a technician from DT to come over in 2 weeks to do some magic. So is this messing up my cable connection?

And does my cable connection also have internet provided? I read some article about "Kable" including internet too.. what's the real story here?

I'm soooo tired of this story and just want my internet/phone/cable like normal !!! I never expected to wait this long for such an easy thing. I feel like I'm in a 3rd world country sometimes!! It's been over a month waiting for these services...

Needing help...
Thanks,
John

Probably the only channel you will get in English via cable is CNN. You can get a few other channels via Kabel Deutschland, they have BBC Prime which shows Eastenders one day after the UK and anything else worthwhile about two years after it's on DVD. You can also get Premiere which has a few movie channels with the films selectable in English too. You will need a receiver box for them though. That'll cost you a euro probably.

If you can, best thing is to get satellite sorted out. I was going through the KD/Prem option for six years and now am a very happy owner of Sky Digibox (even if the timer don't work properly) since moving into our own place.

We're going through the same thing with the internet too but with 1 & 1. Having said that, it was DT that cocked it all up with a wrong connection.

there are some cable providers that provide internet services too. you will need a special contract and then you will have to buy or rent a cable modem.

in my old apartment, i had cable included in the rent. i got a flyer in my mailbox one day saying the building was set up for cable internet so i ordered it. i bought the modem and paid 15€ a month cable internet flatrate. i only kept my telephone so i could call my mom in the u.s.

For getting more channels, you have to (likely) tune your TV set. Atleast I had to do it once and save them in the TV. If you have an old TV, maybe this is done in some other way?

Cable deutschland has a service for internet/phone/TV all in one, but I think they don"t have it wide spread as we like it. But worth the check.

http://www.kabeldeutschland.de

and phone setup usuallly has no inteference with the cable system.

if it's an old TV perhaps you need to manually tune it in order to see how many available channels there are. you could also speak to your neighbors.
for the cable internet you will need to find out what is the cable provider and check with them the availability of this service.
i checked mine and was told that the infrastructure in our building supports TV but not internet. and now i'm also waiting for magic DT to let me online after signing up with magic lidl-dsl/carpo 3 weeks ago. last news is it will be ready the 16th of december.
good luck

I had an inkling that i read about problems with old TVs so i looked up kabel deutschlands tech support to see what the story was


http://www.kabeldeutschland.de/service-tec..._anschluss.html

Or in the queens english "All modern TV sets are cable tv compatible. If you happen to be using an older model, then in certain cases it is not possible to receive certain channels"

So maybe get a new telly or try accessing the channels through a video recorder to get the missing ones.

You can enter your address here to see the list of tv and radio channels you should be receiving:
http://www.kabeldeutschland.de/basis-ansch...nderuebersicht/

Check also with CableSurf for internet over cable.
Edit: Just noticed that you are based in Planegg. Not sure if cablesurf can provide internet service there.

Cable TV Comaptible, if you get a Cable box...

I have KD, and my TV is very new. If I plug the cable into the wall
and do a rescan, I only get 4-5 channels, and all of the are of a very crap quality.. But I don't care as I don't watch german TV anyway..

Hey, thank you for the tips on KabelDeutschland !! I called them and they said that they do have cable for me and that I'm already paying for that. They said I can add an English-channel package for 5 euros more a month but I have to buy a receiver (how much are these?) and then give them the receiver number (15 digit number) and then they can send me the card to put into the receiver and get the extra channels.

As for internet/phone, they said it would still require someone to come out to the house and therefore it would still take 5 weeks to install !!! It's just insane this crap with internet/phone taking so long! Really making me upset... so I have to wait it out with Arcor until they get it all setup for me! The pain continues...

Kabel Deutschland are total crap... I got 3-4 letters from them and a phone call saying that my area has
been upgraded to recieve Cable Internet and all the other new stuf. This was 2-3 months ago... Today
I look at their Prufing, site and it tells me that all this stuff ain't avail. So I call them, nope still not avail. So
why the hell do they keep bombarding me to get this new stuff... Fricken Idiots...

There channel line-up sucks, even for German TV. Their English packages are also overpriced and have crap
channels. I could go on and on about them but I won't. Just take my advise and forget them..

You can get a tripple head package from 1und1 now for 19,99 month for the 1st 6 months, then 29,99 per
month after that. This includes 16MB Flatrate DSL, Flatrate Telephonie (VOIP) to all German landlines, and a
video streaming service with 60+ channels. They also have a bigger/better English channel selection avail.

But if you really want to do it right and get real english TV, then Sky is your only option and get the 1&1 stuff
for your Internet/Phone and forget about their TV package.

I just looked at 1&1 website - not too bad looking but sadly its too late for me since I signed a 2 year contract with Arcor and the technician is coming next week. For TV we'll just stick with KD for now but I will look into other options for TV - perhaps I can use 1&1 for my cable?

Thanks!

By the way, last night was a successful night. My brother-in-law gave us some boxes from his company (DTelekom) to try. We plugged them all in and saw the magical "green light" for the telephone! The phone works now!

But when we tried the internet, we plugged everything in correctly it seems (wall => DSL box => modem => laptop) and saw green lights again and my laptop registered an IP Address but said the signal is too weak to do anything with it. Do you think this is the part where Arcor needs to come to the house and do their magic?? Or am I doing something wrong maybe??

Thanks!

Nope.. They only come out to do testing from your end to the Central office. If the Signal is weak now, I don't think there's anything they can do to make it better. Your just to far away from the Exchange.

What sort of connection do you have between the modem and the PC?
If the modem could not sync with the exchange its unlikely you could obtain an IP address, unless the modem is using NAT and giving you a private IP address.

I'm using a normal network cable from the modem to my laptop. I will write down the IP address and look it up at work to see where it maps. I will provide more info tomorrow morning.

Ok we finally received the hardware from Arcor a few days ago. I installed it all myself and ta-da!!! We have phone AND internet now!!! But what's weird is that the technician is still supposed to show up on Friday. So when he came I asked him what exactly he's trying to do when everything works fine for us ! He said he needed to check the wires in the neighbors house to make sure they are correct. Of course they were correct and that was it, he left !

I was mad because this whole time the damn Arcor company simply had to send me the hardware and I could've had internet !!! Pisses me off !!!