we have a uhf aerial freeview box T1020 and have forgotten the password ?

You have not said what you have tried already. This can be interpreted as you being lazy and hoping someone else will do the leg work for you. The issue with using this approach is that you have not helped to narrow down what will help you. It is as if you expecting someone to write a manual on the subject to cover everything.

But you should already have a user manual. You should be consulting the user manual first. It is available for download from Dishtv.

The manual contains:
(1) The default password.
(2) Instructions for updating/refreshing the T1020 software. On some boxes this will reset the password to the default.
(3) A telephone number for DishTV help.
(4) An email address for DishTV help.

What you actually requested should not be possible to do I.e. It should not be possible to retrieve the password. Instead of retrieving the password it should be possible to somehow reset the password.
Think about it. If it was possible to retrieve the password how would a parent know if their child has somehow got round the password restriction?

NS
October 2012

You appear to have forgotten to say what make your box is.

T
October 2012