Strictly speaking, no, she should not need the freeview box, but has he set it up I wonder so she can record stuff onto a video or whatever. This is one aspect which people buying a freeview telly seem to forget, that the tuner is in the telly, and that although you can get a video to work with it, it's pointless because the telly has to be on to get the signal.
Surely most TVs now are self tuning, so set up should just be plugging it in, putting the aerial lead in, and letting the telly do the rest.