Mr 10Percent wrote:
Perhaps someone can clarify my statement but I envisage that a French supplied Avant would have capability for receiving SECAM transmission standards. Have you checked that it can receive and decode SECAM and PAL?
This used to be a problem earlier, but digital TV has mostly eradicated that as I don't think anybody wants to watch analogue SD programming on a TV such as the Avant. DVB is pretty much the same everywhere (North America of course needs to be different and is using ATSC). Also, technology has become much cheaper so most TVs are multistandard anyway.
Mr 10Percent wrote:
I remember taking a Mk1 BV7 to the Kyrgyz Republic of all places only to find it is probably the only other country in the World other than France to use SECAM standard. I could not get the tuner configured to receive local TV and/or SAT signals.
All of former Soviet Union was SECAM. They also used OIRT sound system instead of CCIR, allegedly to make it more difficult for the citizens to follow Western broadcasts. With a domestic receiver, all they got was black and white picture with no sound. Home made multistandard conversion kits were very popular in Estonia on the coast line, which is separated from Finland by only 60 km of sea and so they could easily receive Finnish television (the Soviets would've liked a different directional pattern for the transmitter). An amusing incident happened in 1987 when a Finnish channel aired Emmanuelle the movie. Most of Estonia practically shut down for the day, as all who could, would relocate themselves to Tallinn to their friends or relatives to witness the event.
Sorry for the digression, but it is impossible to give a sensible answer without knowing where the OP is actually going to use his Avant.