Ask Slashdot: Experiences With Free To Air Satellite TV? 219
Dishwasha (125561) writes "Just a few days ago I incidentally discovered a little known secret called free-to-air. Amazingly enough even in the depths of Slashdot, there appear to have been no postings or discussions about it. Just like over-the-air programming, there is free programming available via various satellite systems that only requires a one-time cost of getting a dish and receiver. Both Amazon and Ebay appear to have a plethora of hardware out there. I personally settled on the Geosatpro MicroHD system with a 90cm 26lbs light-weight dish (queue lots of comments about my describing 26 lbs as being light-weight) and I should be receiving that in just a few days. I'm curious, who else is using satellite FTA? What are your setups? Has anyone hacked on any of the DVR/PVR devices available? Besides greater access to international programming, what are your channel experiences?"
Big Ugly Dishes (Score:5, Informative)
C and KU band is a big investment, and I think most places encrypt these transmissions now, so you might want to check around a little more to make absolutely sure you're going to get anything worthwhile.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't believe that is true. You typically want the dish diameter to be 20x the wavelength. A 90cm dish can receive 3.33Ghz signals and above which is right at the C-band [wikipedia.org] frequency range.
Re: (Score:2)
I think there's a power density component, too. C-Band signals are broadcast at a lot lower power than the enormously powerful signals put out by the providers which use 18" dishes.
Re:Big Ugly Dishes (Score:5, Informative)
I think people here (and throughout this thread) are conflating a few different things when they say "free TV." The following explanation is an oversimplification, but anyway...
In the US, back in the '70s and '80s, there was "free" satellite TV. The reason that it was free, though, is that you weren't supposed to have it. Big TV networks, HBO, ESPN, all those guys used analog C-band satellite transmissions to distribute their content to local TV affiliates and early cable TV providers. People discovered that if you bought your own analog C-band dish (the big 6+ footers) you could tap into those transmissions and watch them for free, and a cottage industry sprung up around getting people hooked into this feed. Note that it wasn't like "pay" satellite TV today where you point your dish at one satellite that gives you all the channels you subscribe to - you actually had to point your dish at different satellites to get different content feeds.
The content providers got upset about this and migrated to digital delivery, which could be encrypted. You could still buy de-scrambler gear for your home dish (not so legally) but for most people it was enough of a PITA that they just moved over to a paid cable TV service (whose reaches were growing in leaps and bounds then) or to one of the emerging paid satellite TV services, which sprang up to meet precisely this need. You still have DISH and DirecTV as the two main US paid satellite TV providers today, and they use higher frequencies than C-band (Ku or Ka) which enable those nice little .75m dishes you see everywhere today.
Elsewhere in the world, "Free To Air" TV has always had much more content. In my very limited experience, it's either state-funded TV like the BBC, or it's some other party that buys transponder space on a satellite and says "Okay, here it is for whoever wants to watch it." When travelling internationally I occasionally see ads for FTA TV, but it always seems to be creepy Phillipine megachurches or Al Jazeera wannabes that just can't get their content distributed any other way. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Re: (Score:3)
FreeSat in the UK uses DVB-S and DBV-S2 for some (most, possibly all?) HD channels. I believe the pay service from Sky uses the same system as it is possible for a free channel to broadcast to both from the same channel, they just need to transmit two sets of EPG data.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Its pretty good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or in other words, the poster forgot there are readers that are NOT in the US when posting, and there are commenters who didn't realise this guy was talking about the US. In the UK you call a dish installer, get a Freesat box and Elizabeth's your Queen. In the US? You bend over for the monopoly du jour and whatever they managed to lobby this time.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Except it is not free. Just to have that dish or that TV you have to pay a tax. We have no such tax requirements.
Re: (Score:2)
For definitions of 'have to' the equal 'should, if you feel like it, '.
Project Free TV (Score:3)
there are a ton of **free** streaming sites that just host links...
I watch all shows the day they are released
free-tv-video-online.me/
watchfreemovies.ch/
tubepulus.me
many others
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing like watching shows on illegitimate, foreign-hosted websites laden with pr0n ads and drive-by zero-day flash exploits... Sorry, no. I, for one, have a detectable amount of self respect.
Re: (Score:2)
Free, and illegal.
April First????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the flood of April First stories? Do I have the date wrong? Is the lack of them the joke? Am I not getting the jokes?
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Where's the flood of April First stories? Do I have the date wrong? Is the lack of them the joke? Am I not getting the jokes?
Maybe that's the prank.
Re: (Score:2)
No the prank is beta. Jk, jk, it's not that bad.
Re: (Score:3)
I dunno why..I used to LOVE to see what would come up each year.
Sadly, slashdot lost its sense of humor for some reason.
OMG Ponies, R.I.P.
Re: (Score:3)
It iss probably because of the story about Mel Brooks finally getting around to mAking history of the world part two.
A lot of people were pissed to find it was a prank.
Re:April First????? (Score:5, Insightful)
In case that`s no prank; depending on where you live, the required operations to obtain the feed might be illegal. Where I live, there`s 3 months of summers where trees block a lot of the signal and rain just cut it, and 6 WINTER MONTHS (sorry had to vent about this weekend extra feet of snow) where the antenna won`t pickup anything because of the snow. So yeah, we didn`t use that much before just selling all of it back.
Re: (Score:3)
You do know that you can get heaters for satellite dishes that fix the snow issue? Try your favourite internet search engine.
Note the issues with rain suggest that you needed a bigger dish. That might also apply to trees, though you could also try pruning the trees is possible.
Re:April First????? (Score:4, Informative)
Snow in trees was problematic too. It`s like permanent rain. I live in the middle of a forest and I even took the extra work of bringing electricity, cable and phone through ground entrances, so I wasn`t about to cut trees for my satellite, which I wasn`t using that much at my previous location. And heating trees wasn`t a part of the solution :)
The gear came as a free goodie with a television purchase years before, with free to air access and 3 years of free subscription to a service. I`ve used the service a bit, but the FTA wasn`t worth investing in a bigger or better dish and I didn`t want a large ugly one somewhere either.
Oh well, that was for me. At this time, I get all I want from my internet connection and rented blurays at 1$ a pop in those auto-dispensers.
Re:April First????? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone with a modern install dont even need heaters. the new eastern arc is so steep on the dish that a coat of car wax will keep it snow and ice free even when I got 6 feet of snow overnight this past winter.
99% of the people bitching about Sat TV are clueless people that haven't touched it on 3 decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Which means it`s perfectly aligned toward the trees! YAY!
Re: (Score:2)
The dish yes. the focal point in the sky it's aimed at? no it is much higher in the sky than the western birds. You do understand that Dishes dont point at what they a re receiving anymore right? they do a 60 to 90 degree bounce to the feedhorn so they are easier to mount and dont have anything in the way of the dish.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, Dice Holdings has never been known for its sense of humor (just look at Beta).
Re: (Score:3)
Beta is hillarious, in an Andy Kaufman kind of way.
Re: (Score:2)
Last year there were a zillion April 1st stories, and so much so there was backlash. They may be taking it easy this year.
Re: (Score:2)
It's funny. I first registered a ./ account back around 2001 to complain about the lame April Fool's Day stories. If they are taking it easy, it's about time.
Rick
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OMG! Pwnies!
Happy now?
Re:April First????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last year was terrible, with most of the stories being along the lines of "lulz, windows announces it's using windows kernel". I don't mind a clever joke, but most of it was just plain stupid.
There was a lot of complaining about it, so I'm assuming they've decided to take it easy this year. Personally I'm grateful.
Re: (Score:2)
* using linux kernel
Re: (Score:2)
ObiWan, the need for entertainment is strong with this one.....
Re: (Score:2)
I actually have fond memories of some good April fools jokes.
A internet "radio" station I used to listen to had a great DJ who was known for being a little edgy but had a huge fan following. The day before April fools he went a bit further than usual, so that on April 1'st he could make a heartfelt statement about how he'd gone to far and after discussion with management it had been decided that he would be leaving. I _totally_ bought it (as did la tonne of other people). He played a song while the forums a
Re: (Score:3)
One good April Fools Day joke = funny
Thirty lame-as-fuck April Fools Day jokes = annoying
Re: (Score:3)
I'm hoping this "audio stories" thing is the joke. I'm getting audio versions of the Slashdot stories. This wouldn't be too bad, but they auto-play. I don't want to come to Slashdot and have audio blast from my speakers! Luckily, I keep my volume muted at work unless I decide to put on some headphones. Still, auto-play is bad policy for all sites except ones where the person expects audio/video to play (e.g. YouTube or NetFlix).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is the prank.
Helpful Website (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Great link. Several past google searches rendered forum posts from that site.
You were living under what stone? (Score:5, Informative)
Over here there is an absolute plethora of FTA satellite channels.
Many, if not most, are junk. Porn previews and selling crappy stuff.
But there are still many dozens quality channels like the BBC and the various German stations.BR> Just about every country has one or more FTA channels and as most people (outside of France and the UK) speak or at least understand several languages there is for people like me sufficient on offer.
Old news, but new to Slashdot? (Score:2)
Free to air statellite has been big in Europe since the 1980s, and digital (DVD-S) since the 1990s.
Hacked Linux-based receivers have pretty much dominated the European DVB-S market for the last decade, and especialy in FTA.
It's a shame that it has had little attention from Slashdot and other mainstream open source media over the years, because that has left the field free for some pretty unsavoury people in the TV encryption cracking market.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that cracked satellite recei
Re: (Score:3)
<old man voice activated>
The satellite cracking scene was actually a frequent topic here back around ~2000, back when DirectTV and others went on the war path.
There was also a story on Christopher Tarnovsky more recently, and actually one of the more interesting things to come out of wired (http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/05/31/0013220/satellite-tv-hacker-tells-his-story .. unfortunately the link to the wired article is 404, in case someone actually wanted to RTFA).
It does work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno, it sounds more like C-band [wikipedia.org] to me. At one time the joke was that the C-band dish was the state flower of Oklahoma.
But from what I've been able to tell, what really killed off FTA satellite was that digital made it so easy to encrypt content. The size of C-band dishes at 2-3 meters didn't help much either, which is why pay satellite went with the Ku/Ka bands that only need a half-meter dish.
Re:It does work (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a friend whose family had a house in the mountains. They had TVRO and a BUD, I think there were two boxes one was some kind of amplifier or power injector and the other was the actual tuner.
Every so often they had to have the dish realigned to the satellites or something like that. They would pay a satellite technician something like one hundred dollars to come in and perform the alignment. He would actually chase everyone out of the room to perform his magical feat of calibration. My friend hid a video camera to see what the guy was doing (back then it was a tough ordeal as they used VHS tapes and were enormous). Turns out they guy simply went into a menu and punched in some numbers that were available in the monthly guide. My friends father ripped the guy a new asshole after he found out he was taken for a ride.
The fun part about BUD TV was you could receive uplinks from reporters/camera crews in the field. So you see a reporter standing there playing with his tie, conversing, picking his nose etc. Then suddenly he would stiffen up and a few seconds later make his report, go silent, ask if he was finished and then walk off camera. The feed would either continue for some time or go blank.
UK perspective (Score:3)
Interestingly (perhaps) the UK has a lot of free-to-air content, and satellite in particular is popular because lots of people have mini-dishes on their houses from their own or a previous Sky TV installation. Freesat doesn't get as much coverage as Freeview but you can still walk into your local electronics retailer and find a big-brand satellite PVR next to the other TV hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. The USA in contrast does seem strangely backwards in a lot of ways with regards to TV & Radio broadcasting.
Re: (Score:2)
Dish/Direct TV should offer free basic channels (Score:5, Interesting)
The satellite providers should provide some free basic tv with no monthly fees and just charge the full cost of equipment or allow people to use their own equipment and then make the additional revenue on the advertising side. Other paid cable channels could be an up sell with monthly subscriptions or pay per view. If the satellite providers presented a sufficiently attractive mix of advertising supported channels for cord cutters, then it would be a no brainer for people just to add satellite to their household mix of entertainment options for a couple hundred bucks worth of equipment. The number of viewers would go up by many millions. It really would be an opportunity for a win for the public and a big win for the satellite companies.
A better selection of free over the air advertising supported broadcasts are something that is really missing from the current market.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes I think the pay per view would be pretty key for the satellite company to make money also. I could see the pay per view rental model itself being an interesting stand alone business model. But I think you have to throw in some advertising supported channels for it to make sense from a customer standpoint of plunking down a couple hundred bucks for equipment and maybe more for an install.
But if literally almost every household and bar in the country had satellite hooked up because the only cost was an
Re: (Score:2)
this will never happen. directv was the company that found out people were hacking their hardware to get everything and sent updates to fry the chips inside countless dishes because they were only paying for a small package and getting everything else including ppv for free.
Re: (Score:2)
I am not suggesting that people hack their way to free premium content. I am suggesting that the advertising model could provide valuable content to viewers in order to entice them to connect their tvs to a satellite dish and still be a profitable part of the business and that for the satellite companies they would be in the living rooms of millions more households so they would have greater opportunities to sell additional content and services in addition to making money off the advertising. Heck try it
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
there is some math involved.
Behind the scenes, yes, but in reality, no. To set up a dish, you get yourself a compass (most smartphones have this built in) and a protractor. Then go to a site like http://www.satsig.net/maps/sat... [satsig.net] or your providers site, put in your zip code and point. Turn the TV where you can see or hear it, and start moving it around til the signal comes in clear.
Re: (Score:2)
The issues you have raised all seem pretty minor and manageable compared with the upside of the satellite companies having access to another 50 to 70 million households for advertising or for selling additional products and services.
Honestly these issues sound like trivial or even silly concerns. Pointing a dish is no different than pointing an antenna and somehow millions of people over a couple of generations of people managed to work that out and get OTA TV broadcasts. Dishes for existing paying custom
Re: (Score:2)
"I think one reason they don't is because it's not trivial to set up a dish properly, there is some math involved. "
No math involved, and in fact if you actually do a little bit of research plus reading first and have a $19.00 tool you can zero in a dish in 15 minutes. All without a calculator.
Re: (Score:2)
not even that. I live not many miles from the Prime meridian, and to align my satellite dish (done it several times, most notably after I had to replace it after my south wall fell off the back of the house), all I did was point the thing South and elevate it about 20 degrees. 65% average signal strength on the Astra constellation - enough to actually decode - a full channel list on my 5K receiver (Fortec Star 4400). I'm pretty sure if I used a satfinder I'd get better than 90% signal strength, but that doe
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, you just enter your zip code in the setup menu and it gives you alt and azimuth. It could take some fiddling back in the '90s to get close enough that the signal meter would help you, but the newer hardware is much less touchy. Meanwhile, back then it was all self-install only. These days it's easy to find someone who can do it for you.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not a motorized dish that will automatically scan the sky and find the satellite(s) you're looking for? Maybe this is overkill for programming on one satellite, but the FTA listing in wikipedia shows them appearing on multiple satellites meaning if you cared about content on multiple satellites you'd be re-aiming anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
I've long thought the government should buy out/launch their own free-to-use satellite tv service and treat broadcasting on it like OTA broadcasts. Disallow any two channels to be owned by the same company and poof: the era of crappy tv funded by annoying commercials returns.
Re: (Score:2)
I am not even going to go into opening the doors for legality of stealing signal with the argument "if it is free to receive from
Re: (Score:2)
It appears that there are quite a few free satellite channels [wikipedia.org] and the number of choices has been growing. So, if Montana PBS can afford to broadcast from a satellite, then I don't think the limiting factor is cost.
The question isn't whether it is economical to support a satellite tv channel with just advertising. I think the answer to that is yes it is possible. The question is about quality and profitability, since most of the free satellite tv channels seem to be less profitable and carry more niche p
Not in the 90s (Score:2)
Maybe it's fun to play with, nothing wrong with that, but ultimately it's not a good way to watch TV. If you just want basic TV, an antenna will get you a good amount of channels. My $5 Radio Shack antenna gets me like 50 channels including weird shit like the Dog channel. If you want to watch extended channels like HBO, go to Piratebay or Playon or Torrentstream or Hulu.
Re: (Score:2)
I use my analogue antenna as part of my HF radio array now since there's no analogue TV in England anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you even find wire hangars any more, an antique store? LOL. Cool link but it's another 90s relic.
Wire hangers are not obsolete. You can buy high quality ones at the store still but that's not how most people get them.
All of the cheap wire hangers I have I got from and still get from places like dry cleaning and uniform cleaning shops.
Don't expect it to be Cable (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who puts those shows up in the air, I'll tell you it all depends on what you're looking for.
If you're looking for sports backhauls, you'll most likely be disappointed. Almost every professional sports venue in the country uses fiber as a backhaul, not satellite. The only places that use birds are places that do small numbers of broadcasts infrequently (think college campuses). And even then, a lot of networks have policies that require them to use BISS encryption. So unless you're friends with someone in the uplink world (because yes, they do share downlink info and BISS codes with each other so they can watch live events while on the road) you'll find the content to be sparse.
If you're looking for TV networks, look at it this way. If there's any value to the network (i.e. if it's on anything but the base tier of your cable or satellite operator), it's encrypted. Because why would they give away for free what they're getting $1.60/subscriber to sell? You'll find some foreign networks and stuff you most likely don't care about, but that's about it. If you know the timing you might find syndicated shows being fed to your local TV stations (think Ellen or Judge Judy) or something mildly useful like that, but even more of those shows are now being BISS encrypted. The only reason more syndicated shows don't encrypt is because they get sick of having to pay to re-feed shows because of inept downlink ops.
The holy grail for FTA is finding "wild feeds" - temporary uplinks from site to a network (think breaking news). You can find some serious hilarity here sometimes. But the feeds come and go in a matter of quarter hours, so they're tougher to find.
The feeds are out there, but there's not a lot of FTA ones in North America. Further complicating things is the myriad of encoding specs (bitrate, constellation, FEC, encoder model, etc etc etc). It ends up being a total crapshoot trying to find things. So I guess what I'm saying is it depends on what you're looking for. If you're doing this as a hobby to see what you can find, it can be a lot of fun and even rewarding at times. If you're looking to replace cable, you're going to wish you'd spent your money on a Roku or a Slingbox at your friend's house instead.
Re: (Score:2)
The holy grail for FTA is finding "wild feeds" - temporary uplinks from site to a network (think breaking news). You can find some serious hilarity here sometimes. But the feeds come and go in a matter of quarter hours, so they're tougher to find.
I watched the Columbine shooting news coverage live on one of these wild feeds. They showed things that did not air on TV (victims trying to escape and leaving blood trails, etc). Not exactly what I wanted to see, but the ability to watch these things was interesting. The news anchor bloopers and such can be interesting too. I've caught a rare sports feed (15+ years ago) and its always interesting to see what the camera men are up to when the commercials are airing. Overall, though, I agree that it is
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, we are better off with the over the air (OTA) local TV stations (100+ channels in Los Angeles (L.A.) areas!) than satellite TV for local broadcast stations and Internet assuming viewers have access to both. I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org] and nothing really good interest me. :/ Adjusting dishes can be a pain and annoying. It is already bad enough for my antenna(s/e). :)
Re: (Score:2)
I remember the film Spin [imdb.com] which was made of out takes from wild feeds of politicians and church leaders appealing to their constituents for money. It showed them making outrageous remarks not realizing they were on the air at the time.
Re: (Score:2)
I had a FTA receiver connected to a small dish that was mounted on the roof of the house when I bought it a few years ago. After some fiddling with the receiver settings, I was able to detect several dozen channels, only a few of which were unencrypted. The best one was the NASA TV channel, which I watched quite a lot until one day it went encrypted like the others. I tried re-aiming the dish a few times, to see if I could pick up other satellites, with no luck. Without proper equipment, aiming is very
Not so much FTA, but I do have a satellite setup. (Score:2)
Not so amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
It was old news before this site started so that's probably why it hasn't been discussed.
Great hobby, essential to get ethnic programming (Score:5, Informative)
You'll need a dish (typically 90cm), somewhere with a view of your selected satellites to plant it, an LNB to go on the dish (Low Noise Block Amplifier, the actual "antenna"; the dish is just a reflector), a bunch of RG6 cable leading to your TV, and a receiver.
Before buying all this, take a look at the various satellites and channels available to you, and pick a starting satellite. You'll need to be sure that you have a clear line of sight to the "bird". A great site for this is lyngsat [lyngsat.com]. In the US I suggest starting with Galaxy 19 [lyngsat.com], which has several hundred channels on it.
Summarizing the rest, plant the dish, aim, and scan with your receiver to program the channels. You can get all sorts of things regularly, and occasional "wild feeds" that aren't intended for public consumption. There's also encrypted video, which is either pay TV, private company channels (like Ford, etc.) or network backhauls.
Later on you can get into multiple satellites, either with multiple LNB's on one dish, multiple dishes and a switch, or a motorized (!) dish. They're all fun.
It's a lot of fun, and can be a great intro for kids to electronics, radio reception, satellites, orbital mechanics, space, etc.
You need to consult Lyngsat (Score:2)
But more importantly for you, they will tell you if a channel is encrypted or not on whatever satellite. So the *best* way to tell if FTA TV is going to be worth it to you. It's largely a joke in the US, but a slightly more serious deal in other countries. Lyngsat also
Windows Media Center / Myth TV? (Score:2)
Satellite TV (Score:2, Informative)
My wife and I live on a boat in Europe and have used satellite tv - free to air - for around 15 years. Receive about 340 channels from Astra 2 of which around 100 are worth having - news, drama, documentary, film, old show re-runs etc. Our dish is 85cm and receiver an (now) old Technomate which can pick up any satellite available so we have cover of thousands of programmes from Korea to Brazil. As we cruise rivers and canals we have to retune daily by rotating dish and varying up-angle for different satelli
Wild Feeds (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Glad you discovered it, hope you enjoy it. (Score:2)
> Amazingly enough even in the depths of Slashdot,
> there appear to have been no postings or
> discussions about it.
Because it was old news when the site was founded? [nmia.com]
The Scroungers Guide to Satellite TV
By Gary Bourgois
Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, The Birdwatcher's Report
Re: (Score:2)
Nifty. Thanks for the reference.
Hack it. Flip it. Update and Rip it. Technologic. (Score:2)
Well gee, I don't know, my big motorized dish is pretty useless since all the birds are ciphered and there's just no way on Earth to even crack the codes.
So, I just modded mine to TX instead of just RX and beamed out some Welcome to Earth messages to the alien planets we've discovered.
Yep. That's all it's for. Total coincidence if Gliese 581 just happened to be around the same declination and right ascension as ECHOSTAR 7 was when I last listened for a reply.
The Internet has got a lot more content on deman
Re: (Score:2)
get two of them and weld them together, make a hang drum. They make a wonderful noise. :)
FTA sat TV not much for me (Score:3)
I dabbled a little few years ago but there really not much interests me. Taking a look at Galaxy 19 lyngsat.com as suggested by Isao has stations of little interest to me. However, it was interesting to get some hands-on experience receiving signals from a satellite, ironically the day I first locked on to bird in the Clarke Belt was the same day Arthur died.
Also back then there were websites that you can download software and load this into one of those sat receivers and be able to watch DishTV, Direct, and other encrypted sites for free. However, these didn't offer much (I have no interest in football, soccer, hockey which all have 200 channels each). There were some premimun channels like TCM that I already have on cable, but then I may also dump cable because even TCM shows same movies over and over again (occasionally they will show something different i.e. a series of Mamie Van Doren movies). There were "local" TV stations from various towns like Bakersfield on these dish tv stations. But then almost all I have no interest so why bother.
Getting back to when I setup my satellite receiver. Someone at DeAnza Electronics flea market was selling DishTV Ku-band dishes and oddball sat receiver boxes for dirt cheap, had a whole stack of these and didn't want to crate them all to the dump. Living in a condo reduced my opportunities (all the birds were aligned away from my windows), I was not interested in mounting the dish on a awning of sorts (I was experimenting and had no long term deployment interest). I was able to just fit the dish into my skylight, borrowed a sat finder meter to help lock onto the bird, and it was exciting to see the bars all light up on the satellite receiver box (Comet I think was the brand). Go through the motions to select the frequencies and download the channels. It seemed it was more interesting technically than watching entertainment (again almost all channels were of no interest). I also referred to these sites, http://www.uksatellitehelp.co.... [uksatellitehelp.co.uk] and http://emantechnology.com/stor... [emantechnology.com]. There were some channels that were non-encrypted including NASA-TV Public channel (and this was back when Shuttle was flying). However these stations were able to do encryption far more difficult to hack, and they also encrypted all channels including "FTA" like NASA-TV.
Now there is C-band birds which NASA-TV provides non-encrypted including the Media channel but the antennas are big and hard to find. However, NASA-TV mostly has usual drivel repeated over and over. There was a time when everyone was dumping C-band dishes for free and great opportunity for experimentalists including those wanting a dish to do EME.
Re: (Score:2)
a very typical digital setup (Score:2)
Fortec Star receiver with a handy USB port for channel programming and the facility for adding a hard drive (or SSD, flash, whatever) off a standard Sky 90cm dish.
Outlay: £50 for the receiver, £0 for the dish. 5,000 channels and nothing on.
I used to have an FTA Setup (Score:2)
You'll also want to make sure you at least have a Ka and Ku band capable LNB device on your dish. If you ever upgrade to a fullsize dish you can also pull in channels broadcasting in C band.
I eventually upgraded
Re: (Score:3)
There's a lot of random free stuff out there. This list is pretty up to date usually. You'll need something motorized though...
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Are you in the USA? (Score:5, Informative)
Lyngsat is the best place I have seen to get information about what programming is available. However, its organization takes some getting used to.
The page linked above shows the programming that originates from the US but is broadcast around the world. Similar pages can be used to find programming originating from other countries. However, you need to understand what satellites are viewable from your location.
Other pages are those that show what's available from satellites you can see, such as: http://www.lyngsat.com/america... [lyngsat.com]
This page shows the satellites that broadcast to the US, ranging from 61.5 W way over toward the east to 139 W way over toward the west. If you are located on the east coast, you may have trouble receiving 139 W unless you have a clear line of site toward the west and a perhaps larger-than-typical dish. Similarly, if you are located on the west coast, you may have trouble receiving 61.5 W. Satellites that are more directly overhead your particular longitude will typically be easier to receive. You can find your own longitude very easily by googling your zip code plus "longitude".
Once you're looking at a particular satellite, say Galaxy 19: http://www.lyngsat.com/Galaxy-... [lyngsat.com]
then you need to understand the information that's presented. The first table lists frequencies in the ~4000 range, which corresponds to C-band. To receive these, you need a "BUD" (big ugly dish) of size 6-12 feet (2-4m). The next table lists frequencies in the ~12000 range, which corresponds to Ku-band. These can be received with a 30" (0.75m) dish.
The next columns to pay attention to are the provider name and the system encryption. Look for the "F" icon in the encryption column, indicating that the channel is FTA. Also confirm that the first entry for the transponder in question shows "DVB-S" (or "DVB-S2") and that this is compatible with the receiver you have. The first entry provides info about the multiplexed stream, whereas the subsequent entries provide info about each individual channel within the stream. A decent receiver will be able to figure out all these details itself, but older hardware requires programming in some details.
There's really a couple of ways to use FTA. One is to just set up a system locked to a given satellite and stick with a channel or small set of channels that are stable. The other way is to hop around different satellites and see what's available, since programming does change over time. For this, it's important that your receiver has "blind search" capability (which should be pretty common by now, but you should verify). Having the ability to program the channels easily with a computer program is another nice feature that many receivers offer. This can be a lot better than fiddling with the remote and endless menu layers. And, of course, a motorized dish mount makes it easier to change satellites.
A final word before you embark on this: Lots of these channels have online viewing options, which can be much less frustrating to view (or they can offer a different type of frustration). At least you won't have to fiddle outside with dish alignment on a rainy day to peak the signal. You can instead learn about proxies from the comfort of your desktop.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes there is a Lot you can watch, I get all the soccer I want from south america, and there are tons of other things if you actually install a proper setup with a moveable dish. No there is no NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX except for a few here and there as uplinks and feeds. a LOT of PBS, NASA, and other channels. A couple of birds are full of shopping and jesus-freak channels.
Works great, and if you get a clear shot eastward on a clear night , you can pull in a lot of stuff from europe.
Re: (Score:3)
Back in the late 70s my grandfather got a big satellite dish for his home in the mountains (US), where normal broadcast TV reception was very bad. A 6 foot dish though, with a motor. But it picked up a lot of major channels for free because they didn't encrypt them. Ie, HBO. And this was the time when cable outside of major cities was still rare.
I think for a long time many stations would just not bother to encrypt when transmitting between stations (ie, a microwave link from San Francisco to San Jose)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, welcome to the US, where we have 2 liter and half-gallon bottles next to each other on the grocery shelves. In engineering school, I had to learn about units called "slugs". I hate slugs.
Re: (Score:3)
It's the same thing in Canada. Even flyers have mixed units. I saw a tile cutter on sale at Canadian Tire, which had the following specifications: can cut tiles up to 12" wide, 12 mm thick.
Re: (Score:2)
We have that with tire measurements - 205/45R17 is a 205mm wide tire with a 0.45*205=92 mm sidewall, made for a 17 INCH rim.
Re: (Score:2)
Now that the bandwidth is available, there are a lot easier ways of getting free programming...
But in general less free legal ways
what are you a District Attorney? (Score:2, Insightful)
why, for years here on /. every discussion about using media on a computing device...**every time** some joker has to chime in with "it's not legal"
according to the DMCA it **is** fair use to give a file to a friend...the Federal Government doesn't define "friend" so **anyone** can be your friend, even if they are just a link from megavideo or one peer in a bittorrent
when people say "but it's illegal" what they really are saying is "the lawmakers in this country aren't tec
Re: (Score:2)
you have to put up with a motorized dish, or you need to fill your yard with several dishes
Look, ma, no motor! [google.com]
Anyhow, ATSC OTA is plenty enough for me. Good thing I'm not a sports fan.
Re: (Score:2)
No. It's not. Intelligent people get their information from the source, and not biased bloggers and reporters. Your bloggers are not scions of fact. That would be like us using Huffington Post to "prove" something. No reason to do that. It is just another opinion. We don't cite NBC or ABC or any reporter as proof of anything.
Real information comes from records, and not anecdotes, or suspicions. The fact is that you don't know if the ACA will be a net positive or negative because you haven't given