116 CultureShock! Austria
store in Vienna, for a small membership fee, you can rent
English-language movies from Pickwicks in the 1st district,
Alphaville in the 4th district and Video International in the
19th district. For expatriates who work at the United Nations,
there is a video rental store within the UN complex that offers
movies in a number of different languages.Television
Regular Austrian television has two channels, ORF 1 and 2,
each presenting a mixture of news, sports, local programmes
and shows and movies from other countries dubbed in
German. Local programmes consist of soap operas, talk
shows, variety shows and game shows. If you don’t want
to be limited to two channels, or are unable to understand
German, consider installing cable or a satellite dish. A wide
range of channels from many different countries are on offer
(practically every country in Europe has a cable or satellite
channel). If you are looking for English programming, there
is news on CNN from the United States and Sky News and
BBC World from Great Britain. Televisions operate on the
PAL system; if you bring an NTSC television from the United
States, it will not work.Alternative Television
Digital Media downloads through iTunes is a popular place
to download music, movies, audio books and television
programs onto a computer, iPod or iPhone. See http://www.apple.
come/iTunes. Slingbox is another popular media that some
expatriate friends are using. One streams a program from
a set-top box or digital video recorder located in your home
country directly over the Internet to a computer or other
Web-connected device. There is no service fee but you
must buy a Slingbox device in the United States or in some
European countries. LocationFree is similar to Slingbox and
is a device that delivers programming to a computer. See
also http://www.sony.com.Radio
Austria has a number of radio stations. Stations like Hitradio