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Television Media Wireless Networking Hardware

Satellite Programming for Free? 39

Posted by Cliff from the what's-floating-in-the-air-there dept.
Frank Winstead asks: "I stumbled upon some "Free to air" (FTA) satellite television references on the web, mostly selling equipment. There seems to be a lot of non-English programming available subscription-Free on the Ku band. The English programming seems to be a mix of religious shows, network feeds, and unexplained content from American over-the-air TV stations. Is it worth a one time ~$200 investment for equipment? Is the authoritative info on FTA?"
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Satellite Programming for Free? More

Satellite Programming for Free?

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  • Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @07:32PM (#8207883) Journal
    You'll be getting essentialy what wasn't worth scrambling and selling when the cable companies took over the space waves. There are still people out there with the big dishes (and I sold some of them) who only get this stuff unless they got the new little dish too. Consider it the short wave of TV; not to replace the other, but a neat thing in itself. You *might* catch program feeds before regular broadcast times.

  • If nothing else (Score:3, Funny)

    by Shut the fuck up! ( 572058 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @07:39PM (#8207938)
    At the very least it will increase your geek coefficient.

  • AHH SHHADDUPP! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We've been doing this in another country for nearly 20 years. The thing is that as long as it does not become mainstream then it will stay unencrypted. The general go is to keep mum about it and it will stay as it is/has... pls ssshhhhh...

  • Lots of stuff in FTA satellite feeds (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hectorh ( 113198 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @07:52PM (#8208042) Homepage
    There is quite a bit of feeds in the old Ku band. It seems that the networks have forgotten that people can pick up Ku band too. I guess they don't care too much since the BUD (Big Ugly dishes) are not very common anymore.

    There are all sorts of tv shows that you can pick up, such as:
    - news feeds
    - live feeds
    - tv show feeds (for example, you can watch the episodes of "24" at least a couple of days before they are shown on the regular chanels)

    There are plenty of websites that give frequencies, polarizations and longitude for the various satellites out there. I won't provide any, but they are a mere google search away.

    As for equipment, $200 sounds about right for a good setup. Check eBay, you can find good deals there too.

    There was a session at last year's (2003) defcon about FTA satellite tv.

    Hope this info helps

    • Re:Lots of stuff in FTA satellite feeds (Score:4, Informative)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday February 07, 2004 @01:28AM (#8209946) Homepage Journal
      There are all sorts of tv shows that you can pick up, such as:
      - news feeds

      These are the best if you're bored, because the newspeople go live on the satellite many minutes before they go live on the network, to make sure the link is good. The correspondents and crew say some pretty funny and embarassing stuff when they think noone is watching them.

      So, if seeing your favorite political corresponant talk about how "this town is so fucking boring" when they're covering caucuses in Iowa strikes you as funny, get a BUD.

      Oh, and most people are giving them away, so don't pay $200, take it down for free for somebody who got DSS.
      • Check out a movie called "Spin" [illegal-art.org]. Its available for free download in DVD, VCD and Real.

        Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surre

  • Free-to-Air listing (Score:5, Informative)

    by timothv ( 730957 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @07:59PM (#8208092)
    Here's a free-to-air satellite TV listing for North America: http://www.milliron.net/free2air/Default.htm [milliron.net]

  • Lyngsat (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @08:18PM (#8208238) Journal
    Lyngsat [lyngsat.com] is the place for FTA Sat information.
  • I've got a good reason: piss off the HOA. Like most neighborhoods, my HoA has provisions against satellite dishes. I don't think they enforce them on the little DTV dishes like my neighbors have, but I'd love to get one of those 'search for aliens' dishes in my front yard, just to let them pay my court fees for fighting it.
    • They CAN'T enforce it, regardless of what your HOA says, for dishes 24" and smaller.
      • http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/satellite.html

        A few restrictions for historic buildings, safety concerns, etc.
      • Hence why I'd like them to take me to court, so they can pay my fees.

        • Think of a better reason. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fm6 ( 162816 )
          Not to defend the whole HOA thing (I find this kind of private zoning enforcement obnoxious and evil), but I'd think twice before betting my bank account on the whole FCC-trumps-everything principle. First off, you never know when some judge is going to find some obscure legal theory that says that FCC is full of shit. It might be bad law, but you could face a big hassle to get it overruled.

          Second, there's the "loser has to pay costs" thing. Slashdotters keep bringing this up like it's some kind of holy w

          • I really could give a fuck if I piss off the HOA based on 'having to live with them'. For various reasons, going back to when/how the neighborhood was founded, the development company is the one who does the inspections, billing, etc. There is not any true community involvement in the HOA. If I could spare the 5-10 hours per month, I could probably walk down my street and garner enough proxy votes to put myself in charge of the HOA.

            But you're right, I've no interest in fighting them.
      • They have to allow 1m (~3ft) dishes and less, but the HOA can otherwise enforce any rule that the homeowners, one of which he is, passed. And it sounded to me like he meant one of the older larger dishes. In any case, WTF is the point? Either he has one small enough that must be allowed, or he has too large a one which the contract he signed says he cannot have. I mean really, is he going to park in front of a fire hydrant with the intention of getting a ticket just so he can "stick it to da man" by "making
  • There's some cool shit on those bands, it'd be fun just to see what kind of stuff is out there. Watching network feeds in advance is fun. Plus you'd have that cool dish, just to piss off the neibors.
    • There's some cool shit on those bands, it'd be fun just to see what kind of stuff is out there.

      Sometimes you can find some of that stuff on cable too. Occasionally my local cable company had a channel not listed in their lineup that would have rough versions of future ads on it. Another time they had the full pilot episode of Viper without any ads weeks before it first aired on television.

  • SatCoDX (Score:3, Informative)

    by kju ( 327 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @09:59PM (#8208958)
    satcodx.com has lots of listings for all known satellites. Select your region and look.
  • Do the dishes still need to be the size of a car? Can you decrypt the signals? Just wondering.

  • The times, they are a-changin' (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mhollis ( 727905 ) on Sunday February 08, 2004 @12:37AM (#8216361) Journal

    First, my credentials: I worked in satellite transmission about 19 years ago and had a pretty good handle on what was what back then. I currently work for a national television network out of NYC. I know what has changed and what will be happening in the next few years.

    On all satellites in Clarke orbits (Geostationary, first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke yes that one) the transponders are simple "Repeat what you just received" gizmoes. On the older ones, they'll continue to send back FTA stuff as they receive it but there is a movement afoot to cheapen the use of satellites by digitizing signals and using the bandwidth better by compression. This started happening first with C band satellites because C band is so expensive. C band also is less prone to rain fade and atmospheric problems.

    Presently, the K band is on the chopping block (as in let's chop this one transponder by digitally-encoding several signals into the space of one) and you will notice, as time goes by, that a lot more transponders will "become encoded." This is not all about preventing you, dear reader, from getting the signals. It is being done for cost reasons alone.

    At the network level, it is believed that the viewer cannot see the difference between the compressed and uncompressed signals and the non-compressed signals. While this may become a factor with the adoption of HDTV by the consumer, the network executives just don't care that much about quality these days. The assumption is that the viewer will tune in regardless.

    So look for a steady decrease in the number of signals your big dish can pick up as time goes on.

    • I don't understand why a dish would receive less signals if as you say the networks will compress digital signals into the same space as an old analog signal. Can't you just buy new decompression boxes to hook up to your satellite? Or are you saying that these would be encrypted as well as compressed?

      • I suppose one could say that compression is a type of encryption if you do not know how the signal was compressed. For example, Sony's Digi-Betacam uses DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) to compress the signal as it goes down on tape. But they also make a machine that uses MPEG, another that uses M-JPEG and I think there is another format in there as well.

        You'd wind up having to try out one decoder after another to figure out how the signal was compressed. That hardly winds up being cheap just to view FTA s


  • My neighbor is from Iran, I live in the United States.

    He brought his wife here about 3 years ago, and he thought it would be a cool gift for her.

    He can watch soccer games, news, and she can watch soap operas and many of the Arabic 'MTV' channels. It looks like any other Dish/DirectTV setup.

    He bought it for $250 with some accessories at the Arab market in Dearborn. We set it up outside, ran a new cable to his TV, turned on the reciever...

  • Free to Air porn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2004 @11:35AM (#8237710) Journal
    Interesting this topic would come up. I just stumbled across an ad for an FTA porn channel. It's only in Europe and Asia, but since I live in the latter, I thought it looked intriguing. Apparently it uses the small dishes being in the KU band and you can buy a card to use with a DishNetwork set top box or they say you can encode your own blank card. Maybe next time I'm in the States I'll grab a DishNetwork systeom off E-bay and bring it back here to see how it goes.
    Interesting that this is in Europe and Asia, but not the US. Mmm hmm.

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