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There is. It's called "Free-to-Air" of FTA Satellite. You can get started in it for a couple of hundred dollars, maybe less depending. You might want to read a little on it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and then check out what's being broadcast at http://www.ftalist.com/ and finally, if this is interesting to you go have a look at the equipment you will need at http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Chan... to figure out how you want to do it and to get an idea of how much it will cost. Search out "Free to Air" and FTA satellite for lots more info and other sources of equipment.

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. In the US I suggest starting with Galaxy 19, 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'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. In the US I suggest starting with Galaxy 19, 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.

Change your sports tastes. I stopped watching Baseball and started watching Soccer. I get an AMAZING amount of all I can eat free HD soccer and Rugby from FTA satellite that is brain dead easy to install. Costs nothing but the $199 receiver and the $99.00 dish and pointer and a weekend to install it.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Free-to-air

http://www.gosatellite.com/ is where I shop... as well as ...
http://www.sadoun.com/

Works great, and is wife friendly as well. Plus if you are not a typical american it opens up a TON of international programming as well.

I would imagine that it does vary by type. I was thinking of the standard small dish I've seen around, one or two LNBs, nothing special, never felt that heavy when I picked one up. I could only find one dish which specified the weight in the listing:

http://sadoun.com/Sat/Products/Winegard/DS4047-18-Inch+Antenna.htm

Single LNB, 5lb.

you need some diplexers. allows you to run OTA antenna signal and DBS over a single RG-6. here's an example http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Order/Switches/S-UV30-sadoun_combiner_diplexer.htm

"Those folks would be willing to put up with the expense/uglyness/non-portability of a dish."

And a DirectTV dish is attractive?

WiMax dish

DirectTV dish

Hopefully you pick girlfriends better than you do dishes.

---

Speaking of DirectTV...

• A dish
• An LNB (low noise block downconverter, which sits at the focal point of the dish)
• A receiver

I took the plunge into DVB FTA about 6 months ago, and have enjoyed almost every minute of it. $300 is indeed reasonable, but for another $100 you can get combinations of a bigger dish, better motor and/or better LNBF(s).

My comments below refer to Ku band only. Perhaps 65-70% of the FTA channels on Ku-band. I see most expansion occurring there too. C-band is certainly not dead but also does not seem to be growing like Ku.

PROS:
. A truly eclectic mix of full-time channels available. Maybe 200 TV and 300 radio (audio only) are in my receiver's memory. Yes, are many as 1/2 are foreign language - mainly Chinese, Spanish, Arabic. A few of those have additional English audio channels.
. No subscription fees. Spend you $300 or $400 and enjoy.
. If you like news, monitor the direct feeds from the news truck. Transient in nature but are plentiful and especially easy to find during major events, e.g., new pope, volcano, weather, political. See what the reporters say when they think no one's watching. :-)
. Incredible selection of music/audio channels.
. The DiSH network satellites have most of their audio, and a few TV channels in the clear, e.g., NASA TV. There is also a pair of Canadian commercial satellites (Nimiq) with similar programming.
. If you also get a computer card like a Twinhan 1022, on Linux you can easily record any channel's MPEG stream direct to HD, and burn that to a non-standard but playable DVD. You can do similar things on Windows with $$ software and not as much flexibility. Perfect recordings though, exactly as they came over the air.

CONS:
. Not for folks who gotta have their Discovery Channel, MTV or other commercial channels. More appeals to the "DXer" type personality, who appreciates unusual programming.
. Getting a motorized Ku band setup aligned can be a challenge for the best installer. A perfectly plumb, stable mounting post is the first step.
. No guarantees today's programming will still be there tomorrow. Then again, if it's not, chances are some new channel has popped up elsewhere.
. You have to dig (search) for new programming; more hands-on than viewing channels on a commercial service.

Advice:
. Get at least a 90cm dish, 1m is even better. Smaller (75-80cm) can work but you will miss some weaker channels and lose more signals during rain.
. Get a motor and be prepared to spend a couple hours aligning it. There's no other way to cost effectively see the 20 or so satellites carrying FTA programming. Get help if available.
. Be sure your receiver has 'blind search' capability, e.g., Fortec Lifetime Ultra.
. If you get a 90cm+ dish, a cheap LNBF is fine. An expensive LNBF helps only with fringe signals or on smaller-than-they-should-be dishes.
. If you get a new combo circular/linear LNBF or use two or more LNBFs, put a 2 or 4 way DiSEqC switch out at the dish and let the receiver electronically select between them.

I have two LNBFs mounted on a 90cm motorized dish - an Invacom linear in the middle, and an original DiSH circular on a small bracket to the side. Works beautifully because the circularly polarized satellites are so strong. When receiving a circularly polarized satellite, I just program the motor to move +5 degrees of the true satellite position.

Some sources I've used:
http://adventistsat.com/ - equipment
http://sadoun.com/ - equipment and user forums
http://lyngsat.com/ - for programming. Not always 100% correct but usually current. I am also a contributor.

The guy who runs Adventistsat is courteous, really knows his stuff and posts on a lot of DVB/sat boards.