How to view freeview channels?

Why was my Freeview TV picking up my Sky+ dish?

• We have Sky+ set up in one room of the house. On the other end of the house we have a Technika Freeview television that is just plugged into the aerial. Earlier in the year, we were using our Freeview TV and switched it to "analogue" and suddenly we were able to view the Sky from the other room in the house. We couldn't change channels or anything but we were getting the same feed. At the same time, we lost all BBC channels on our Freeview. Last week we had a problem with our Sky box and it was replaced. Now on the Freeview TV we don't have the link to Sky anymore and we still don't have BBC channels at all, no matter how much retuning, plugging/unplugging we do. Does anybody know what may be going on here? I feel like suddenly being able to pick up the Sky dish and losing BBC isn't a coincidence. But can't work out how that could have happened? No cables involved or special equipment and to our knowledge, nobody touched anything.

• Answer:

  Sounds like your TV aerial connection is looped through your Sky box. I.E. your connection goes from aerial on roof -> Sky+ aerial in -> Sky+ aerial out -> Technika TV. Follow the aerial connection all the way through, from where the aerial lead comes into the house, to confirm that this is the case. I believe Sky+ boxes still have this optional "aerial in/out" so that they can display a picture on ancient analogue televisions that don't have SCART sockets. However, you have to choose the frequency it uses carefully, so that it doesn't interfere with any of your Freeview or analogue received channels. If the Sky+ box happens to be outputting on the same frequency that the BBC uses on Freeview, then you'll lose those Freeview channels. Go into the settings on your Sky box, change the RF output channel (or better, disable RF output altogether) and you'll probably find your BBC channels come back. An easier, and probably more effective method is just to unplug the two aerial connectors from the back of the Sky box, and plug the two cable ends together (so the Sky box is no longer "in the loop", as it were, and the aerial connection goes direct to the Technika).