How do you unlock channels on freeview?

Freeview. Can a TV with Freeview receive freeview channels anywhere?

• I am wondering if I buy a TV with freeview in UK, I will be able to receive freeview channels in Ghana. Both countries I am told use PAL BG. I was on a visit and realised that all households in remote areas as well as in some towns had some boxes hooked to their TV. These boxes were connected to discs. A house with different tenants could have about 4 discs each belonging to a family

• Answer:

  Freeview works on a different system to PAL. Freeview is digital TV (DVB-T and DVB-T2 in the UK) while PAL is for analogue TV. You can think of digital and analogue as two completely different systems. The UK still has a couple of TV regions using analogue, but the rest of the country has switched over to digital. Freeview is a brand name for UK digital TV. Ity's a bit easier to relate to than DVB-T. We also have Freeview HD. This is digital TV capable of high definition as well as standard definition. The technical name for it is DVB-T2. Eventually DVB-T2 will take over from DVB-T in the UK. That will be a bit of a problem for people with older DVB-T tuner products, but it is still some way off yet. The situation in Ghana is somewhat different. The Ghanian government has chosen to ratify the selection of DVB-T2 for national terrestrial broadcasting. http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2011/10/05/ghana-opts-for-dvb-t2/ In effect the official line is to miss out DVB-T and go straight for a HD compatible system It has requested all importers of digital TV tuner boxes to stop bringing in DVB-T boxes and concentrate just on the DVB-T2 products that will be fully compatible with the countries national broadcasting standard. http://www.dvb.org/about_dvb/dvb_worldwide/ghana/index.xml As long as Ghana uses the same compression algorithms as the UK's DVB-T2 system then UK TVs with a Freeview HD tuner will be compatible with Ghana's system once it it up and running. In the meantime a UK TV's analogue tuner can be switched from PAL I to PAL B/G in the set up menus. As for "discs" which I think you might be referring to satellite dishes. The reasons for them is simple. The PAL B/G TV network is limited to just a few channels. If you want more channels then a second broadcast system is needed. Satellite provides that. The other challenge is geography. There will be large parts of Ghana that are out of reach of the transmitter network. A satellite receiver is not a Freeview (DVB-T2) or Freeview HD (DVB-T2) tuner. The box connects to a TV using an AV lead. It's a separate system and bypasses the TV's own tuner completely. Satellite has many advantages but also one big disadvantage. The feed on a single wire from the dish can supply only one channel at once. If you want to watch two different satellite channels at the same time you need two dishes (or a second LNB on the same dish) and two tuner boxes.