Freeview television and Sky digibox and satellite dish

[nectarine]

I have read lots of threads on this but am still quite baffled ...

At our French house we have a Sky satellite dish and digibox which are on one aerial point in the lounge, and we also have a rooftop aerial with another point in the same room.  I think the rooftop aerial needs tweaking or checking the cable because when I plug the television in I don't receive any signal at all ... but that's something to be done in the future.

We are now moving out and plan to bring our Bush Freeview box, it's about four years old.  I guess I can plug in the digibox and receive all the Sky free to view stuff, but do I have to plug in the rooftop aerial (when it is mended) to receive French television?  And what about TNT, which I understand is the French equivalent of Freeview, I believe we are in the catchment area of a main transmitter so would this be watchable on a UK box?  Or are the transmission signals different, like when you try to watch American videos on a UK television and they are always wobbly?

Also, if I do need the transmissions from the Sky dish and the rooftop aerial, then I would need to plug in two cables to the back of the television ... but how?  Or would I swap cables depending on whether I wanted to watch Sky or French TV?

Apologies if this is basic stuff - just thinking about it makes my brain go funny!  I still haven't quite mastered how to use our super-duper DVD-video machine and have to ask next door's ten year old son to programme it for me, unfortunately I cannot take him to France and get him to wire up all the cables!  Therefore, any advice or information will be much appreciated.  Thanks all.

[Martin963]

Q1   Is the TV you're trying on the roof aerial British-originated or bought in France?   If the former it may well be that it doesn't "understand" system L with SECAM colour and you may well see nothing (as the sync pulses are indecipherable to a system I Brit set)

Point 2:  A Bush Freeview box doesn't work on a sat dish,  it's designed to receive a UHF signal off an aerial.   Try it on your existing one and do a scan,  unless it's out of the Ark (pre 2000) then "IF" the aerial is correctly aligned and working it should get French TNT,  assuming the aerial is indeed pointing at a main station equipped for TNT and not to some little relay that won't be so equipped (at least until 2011 ish).    The system I and L problem doesn't exist once you get into the digital domain.  

Point 3:   the sat dish feed still goes to your sat digibox,   your aerial feed goes to your Bush,   and you need either two SCART sockets on the TV (AV1 and AV2) with one box plugged into each socket,  or failing that you need to buy a SCART switcher box for about €15 from LeClerc -  you use two Scart cables from the digital boxes to the selector box,   and one Scart lead from the selector box to the TV;  the selector has buttons on it that allow you to choose which box to feed to the TV.

Please come back and ask more - it ISN'T easy if you've never had to do it for real!