Can I use my digital freeview box abroad and receive English channals?
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV No. You cannot receive signals from UK Freeview transmitters abroad. You box will be able to receive local "DVB-T" transmittions, if there are any.
You can use satellite equipment pointing at the Astra 2D satellite from some European countries however to get around 100 UK free-to-air channels.
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Tuesday, 20 December 2011
G
Gino5:35 PM
I live in Italy just south of Rome,we brought
a free sky view box with us from England and
we want to know if we are able to watch English
channels here and which sat. and frequencies I
have to set it to.
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Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Gino/john: Please see All about Freesat | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice for details of the coverage area.
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Monday, 2 January 2012
M
MTorrey12:06 PM
I live near Adana Turkey and was wondering if I would be able to pick up free channels with my HD antenna from the USA? (ADANA,TURKEY)
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Thursday, 5 January 2012
B
Bob the Builder7:38 PM
Hi Brian,
I have moved to Hungary, I have brought a 2m dish a couple of years ago and have a oldish sky box, I now have some spare time to install it all, If I align the dish to the sky satellites will I be able to receive the freeview channels on the sky box? thanks (you will understand why I am desperate to get the UK channels once you have tried to watch Hungarian t.v also BBC entertainment has been stopped by my local cable provider
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Sunday, 8 January 2012
T
Trustix2212:32 AM
Hi,I live in france, in Brittany, neere to Lamballe in cotes d'armor, so do my mum and dad, we have always had UK in france thru the chanel islands. recetley (a bit more than a year ago now) the chanel isles have gone to digital to, and they still get english tv with there with a TNT box reciver they got originaly for french tv form local LIDL. and it works fine ! no changes made to arial or nothing !
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Thursday, 12 January 2012
J
John Andrews10:41 PM
Hi, just returned from an extended stay in the Algarve and took my mother. She really missed English language TV so I wondered if I took the Freeview + box next time if the programmes already recorded on to the hard drive would play on a Portuguese TV. Thanks for your help.
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Friday, 13 January 2012
M
Mike Dimmick5:28 PM
John Andrews: As long as you can connect the box to the TV, you can watch.
The SCART connector is probably the easiest way to connect. While broadcast transmission standards were a little different, the way that pictures are sent on a cable is the same in both countries. You may need to check that both the box and TV are set to RGB or to CVBS mode - this setting controls whether colour is sent on three separate wires, one for each colour, or all combined onto one wire.
If the box and TV support a digital connection like HDMI, that's an even better solution.
You might not be able to use an RF connection, even if the box has an RF modulator that supports it. Portugal used PAL colour with 625-line System B/G for analogue transmissions, while we use PAL with System I. The sub-carrier frequency used for audio is a little different, so you may well get pictures but no sound. Newer TVs usually allow you to select the system used, so you might be able to select PAL I rather than PAL B/G on the TV. But if it's that new, it should have SCART sockets!
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M
Mike Dimmick5:58 PM
Trustix22: The core standards used for digital TV are the same in France and in Britain - DVB-T with pictures encoded in MPEG-2 Video and sound in MPEG Layer II - so it's not surprising that it mostly works. However, France's system is fully specified in IEC 62216 (sometimes called the Euro-Book or E-Book) while ours is in the Digital TV Group's D-Book. Some of the service information is not fully compatible, so you might find that PVR series link and the like doesn't work.
Notably, for interactive services, I believe France use the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP), which is based on Java, while UK Red Button services use the MHEG-5 program description language and the 'UK Profile' object model. That means BBC Red Button and other interactive services won't work on a TNT box.
I also believe France still uses essentially standard teletext, which is carried differently for digital TV, but the content format is the same. UK transmitters, including the Channel Islands, do not broadcast standard teletext data, only the MHEG-5 content.
Subtitles should always be available as I believe both UK and Europe use the DVB Subtitles standard, which carries the subtitles as a picture overlay. Make sure you use the subtitles button on the box's remote, rather than trying to access teletext from the TV.
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J
John Andrews8:11 PM
Thanks Mike. Great news. That should keep my mum entertained for a few hours. The TV we use in Portugal has a SCART socket so it should work ok.
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Saturday, 14 January 2012
A
alex8:02 PM
hi i have brought a samsung led tv in holland and i am about to move back to the uk will i be able to get freeview on hte tv when i retune in england??????
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