hi hi, I was wandering if I buy a freeview box (recorder) in the UK if it would work in the UAE? Currently in the house in UAE they have some sort of a cable, could they plug in the uk freeview box into the existing cable and view only UK channels and/or only currently supplied cable channels? Many thanks...

I'd be surprised if it works, but even if it did, you definitely wouldn't be able to get the UK freeview channels.......

Alas, no dear.

If you are a serious TV junkie then you'll need to buy a hacked StarSat Dreambox plus the access card (which costs around 400 Dhs for 6 months). This will get you thousands of (mostly bollox) channels on the Hotbird and Nilesat transponders. Hook it up to your existing dish and Bob's your uncle.

If you also want Fanny's your aunt with the 3D sport, movies etc, you can get an additional Vee Pee En box...

This will get you pretty much everything apart from the Sky channels which are unhackable without spending megabucks.

This picture perfectly sums up my initial thought too!!

I think you will have more success if you try and set up a complex system of mirrors from the UK to the UAE that will allow you to watch the TV in the living room of your parent's house.

I have a UK Sky subscription, and can watch via SkyGo service using vee pee enn.

BTW: You can watch Sky (in Europe) without a subscription, and it doesn't cost megabucks, if you know the right place to look (don't ask I won't tell...)

The satellites which distribute Sky to the UK have a very tightly focussed beam and cannot be viewed in the middle east without a dish the size of Jodrell Bank.

http://www.lyngsat-maps.com/maps/astra2d.html

Or a Slingbox http://uk.slingbox.com/

I used to get Sky in Libya using a 3.8m dish, but even then the signal was ratty.

My old man has a 2.5m diameter dish in Crete.

Gets some channels never
some all the time
some until lunch
some only after lunch.

That would drive me up the wall.

Thank you for all your replies. Seeing as this was intended as a gift for christmas I think I better stick to the usual DVD boxsets as this is far too technical......nevertheless worth a try!!

Then choose the correct region - Pal, Secam or NTSC.

Digital broadcasts (satellite and terrestrial) don't have this encoding, and if you connect a receiver via HDMI it is a direct digital connection, no need for UHF modulation, which is what these old analogue region systems are.

I think it was re the boxsets...