Free-veiw

[Flibert]

I have a freeveiw digi box and i have the arial and TV Conected to it but it still dosn't pick up any channels at all it has a card slot butmy mum says It should automaticaly pick up SKY but I thought we needed a SKY card in the card slot.

Any idea how to work it?

[vehelpfulguy]

If you have a Freeview box then you cannot pick up Sky on it, you need a satellite dish and a Sky box to pick up Sky.

If it has a slot it may be for "Top Up TV" which is a company that offers a few channels on Freeview that you do need to pay for so you need their card.

Once it is connected up you need to go through a process to "scan" for the TV chanels, have you done that?

If it says it still cannot find any channels it may be because your aerial is not good enough, or that you live in an area with a poor Freeview signal.

You can check if your signal should be OK on this site here, just put your postcode in:

http://www.freeview.co.uk/home

Here is more about top up TV:

http://www.freeview.co.uk/home

If you give us the make and number of the freeview box we will try and help you and let you know exactly what you have.

[vehelpfulguy]

Sorry, second link was wrong.

HERE is the link for top up TV.

http://www.topup.tv/

Note it is purely optional to pay for top up TV (I would not bother) and you can watch many Freeview TV channels and listen to many Freeview radio chanels without paying any money.

[vehelpfulguy]

One extra thing, can you tell us how you have connected everything up?

Normally you need an aerial lead to go from the aerial (on the roof) to the Freeview box, then another aerial lead goes from the Freeviev box to the TV.

You ALSO need a scart lead to go from the Freeview box to the TV.

To watch Freeview you normally need to "switch" the TV so you are watching what is coming in via the Scart socket, normally it means switching the TV to AV1 or AV2.

How to do this varies from TV to TV, so you may need to look in the booklet that came with your TV.

One some remote controls it is shown as a small arrow going to the right, but as I said, there is no standard button for this.

[vehelpfulguy]

Me again, here is a nice simple diagram which shows you how to connect Freeview up.

http://www.freeview.co.uk/installation

You can deselect the Video and DVD player on that diagram for a simple picture of how to connect the Freeview box up.

[Buenchico]

You can ignore the slot in the Freeview box. As VHG indicates, this was used for inserting a card for TopUp TV but the card-based service is effectively discontinued. You now need a special box to receive TopUp TV. (Existing customers, with a card in the slot, can continue to get a few extra channels but the card-based service is being phased out and new subscribers are not being accepted).

As VHG has indicated, the Freeview box must be connected to the TV via a Scart lead. (With the majority of Freeview boxes, the 'aerial out' socket only replicates the signal which goes into the box. You can't receive Freeview channels through it).

Also, as VHG has indicated, the TV must be switched to 'AV' and not to any numbered channel. Many TVs automatically switch to 'AV' when they detect a signal at the Scart input, but some require that you press the 'AV' button on the TV's remote control.

Again as VHG states, you need to get the digibox to scan for signals before it can receive anything. The instructions will be in the handbook. If you haven't got the handbook (which seems quite likely, as any digibox with a slot is several years old), you should look for a button, on the remote control, labelled something like 'Menu' and then look for an on-screen option such as 'Set up'.

Chris