Page 1 of Sky Digital (As Freeview) Problems

Does anyone have a Sky Digital box without a subscription (ie a freeview box). Our subscription ran out in March when we moved over to Telewest. We kept the box, dish etc and hoped to use it as a freeview box.
The set up works, but the channels are strange. We get BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, ITV2 & ITV3 amongst others, but we don`t get CH4, CH5, or E4 which are all free through normal freeview.
Does anyone else have these problems or are they to be expected?

Sky is a Satellite TV service. Sky equipment includes a satellite dish aimed at the Astra Satellite to recieve the broadcasts

Freeview is a Digital Terrestrial TV service. Freeview equipment uses a regular TV aerial to recieve the broadcasts from land based transmitters.

You can not pick up Freeview with your Sky box... you will require a Freeview box.

This item was edited on Sunday, 18th September 2005, 21:57

Sorry, wrong terminology. I meant Free To View (FTV). Browsing through old forums, I found answer myself

here

I couldn`t understand why normal terrestrial channels which are available to just about anyone with a TV weren`t available.

Hi - as nice1 says you cannot pick up freeview with your skybox, but then I guess you knew that and were after advice on watching `free to view` channels using your sky equipment - maybe the faq here would help:

http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk

Hi Hodgey,

Since no-one has actually answered your question, C4 & Five are Free-To-Air (FTA) NOT Free-To-View (FTV). This neans you have to purchase a Solus card from Sky for c.£23.

Hope this helps.

Thanks aljar. I already have a freeview box (with an average set top aerial). My dilemma now is whether to pay for a card for the Sky box or put up with the intermittant picture quality of the Freeview box. The Sky box got moved to the bedroom (where the Freeview box is) when we got Telewest, and I haven`t got round to sorting a decent outside aerial for it yet.
I think I`ll go for the card for now as I can`t see me getting round to sorting the aerial out for a while yet.