Slashdot Mirror

You can still get the networks and pay networks, the days of unencrypted backhauls stopped, what about 1986-90, so you bought a box and subscription.

http://skyvision.com/programming/dsr410pack.html
http://www.galaxy-marketing.com/satellite_list_satellite_directory_for_north_america_with_frequencies.htm

The old owner most likely took his hardware with him. So the poster will need some C-band gear

http://skyvision.com/store/dtv.html
http://skyvision.com/store/dsr410.html
http://skyvision.com/store/c-band_store_page1.html

http://www.satelliteguys.us/

http://store.satellitemart.com/C-band_c_62.html

http://www.sat-direction.com/

http://www.satbeams.com/

The old owner most likely took his hardware with him. So the poster will need some C-band gear

http://skyvision.com/store/dtv.html
http://skyvision.com/store/dsr410.html
http://skyvision.com/store/c-band_store_page1.html

http://www.satelliteguys.us/

http://store.satellitemart.com/C-band_c_62.html

http://www.sat-direction.com/

http://www.satbeams.com/

The old owner most likely took his hardware with him. So the poster will need some C-band gear

http://skyvision.com/store/dtv.html
http://skyvision.com/store/dsr410.html
http://skyvision.com/store/c-band_store_page1.html

http://www.satelliteguys.us/

http://store.satellitemart.com/C-band_c_62.html

http://www.sat-direction.com/

http://www.satbeams.com/

I'd say it's a small Slashdot-style minority clamoring for A La Carte programming.

Skyvision is a well known and reputable satellite provider of ala carte channels. Their subscriber numbers are basically a rounding error compared to the big providers. As for my relationship with skyvision, and providing ala carte channels, there is a guy on the NANOG mailing list with a well known humorous quote something like "I strongly encourage my competitors to deploy this bad idea".

http://www.skyvision.com/programming/alacarte.html

I can share some of the research we did.

Here is an example of ala-cart service, for individuals. If you have a large block that buys as one collective, you can negotiate a better price:

http://skyvision.com/programming/alacarte.html

Even as an idividual, there are pleanty of $1 a month channels- Sci-Fi, Comedy Central, E!TV, and others. They even have a $12.49 per month package of 21 channels including CNN, Sci-Fi, Fox News, Disney, and lots of others. There is good choice.

Just so people don't accuse me of selling a service, here is another one:

http://www.usdtv.com/

They have a HDTV package for $19 a month, including ESPN, Fox News, lots of popular stations. The only problem is they are in three areas in the USA (Arizona I believe).

Back to our research. We then discovered all the free channels with a large C-band dish-

http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html

Many of them are stations I never heard of, but there is Animal Planet, 7 channels of Bloomberg which I had in college and remember as a headline news type channel, 3 channels of C-Span for the government junkies (I love C-Span for book tv), CBS HDTV east and west, 5 CNBC's, 4 CNN's, 6 Discovery tv (including one that is HDTV and one that is spanish), 7 MTV's although none are from the USA but I have seen MTV from Russia and it was almost all USA music videos the only differance was the DJ's spoke russian, 7 PBS and one of them is HDTV. I am not going to list them all, but those are some good channels and they are all FREE.

If that is what I think you are doing, that is pretty sweet - talk about screwing the "man" and telling him where to stick it!

We don't think we are screwing the man at all. It is more like stopping Comcast from screwing us. We've all lived with bad service, and an overpriced product. If there were 10 different cable companies, and they had to compete, prices would be 25% of what they are today. But there is a monopoly.

All in all, kudos to you and your (hopefully) merry group - I hope it works out for you, and you get what *you* want (hmm - alternatively - have you thought about mixing the two - get the sat feed, turn each channel into .torrents, then give each unit a box to view the .torrents, and other 'net video offerrings - combine it with cheap T1 service from Speakeasy or similar - so sweet)...

That would require more work than we are willing to do. Since we are an association, we pay dues, and we want to minimize our fees. For example, they decided to open the swimming pool 3 hours later this summer than last (1pm instead of 10am on weekdays). Why? To save a few bucks of cost- pool attendant being the largest.

We just want to get a large sattelite or two, and run cable to everyones home.

We have also talked with a lawyer. There is a state law where we live that says any cable a cable company lays down on private property is the property of the land owner and not the cable company. We are trying to find out if we can cut off the feed from comcast and run our own over the existing cables.

What I do know is we will find a solution that is better than comcast!! I'll also say another thing. If I did not live in an association, I would talk to my next

... off the skyvision link above, gives you the table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_east.html as well as another table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_west.html which list what is available on FTA, as well as whether you can just use a C band lnb, or if you need a ku band lnb as well.

I don't know who to recomend to find out what of those feeds might be of interest to you.

My own big-dish experience is pretty much limited to C-band reception pre FTA equipment. For my needs a single lnb with rotation provided sufficient tunning. Rotation for v/h happened a lot faster than traversing from one sat to the next. Using 'intelegent' transponder selection also worked well until I inserted channels to be skipped. (Since all the even transponders or oriented one way, and the odd transponders the other, 'intellegent' selection walks through either even, or odd until it gets to the end of the list, then switches to the odd or even and rotates the lnb as appropriate.)

Going with a multi-head lnb, would mean that you would only be adjusting the rotation on a per sat basis. You will probably need to get extra rg-6 cable however if you are going to get multi-C and multi-ku lnbs, as you will need a feed for each lnb receiver, and in my experience the ribion cable out there consists of two rg-6 feeds, and control leads for both the rotors and the drive arms.

One other accessory you may want to look into is the lnb feed horn adapter to allow you to run your DirecTV receiver off your big dish. http://www.skyvision.com/store/mi5034007.html

I do have one, and so long as you are only looking at the one sat location, everything seems to look great. Theoretically you will get better reception, though this will depend upon how good you are at mounting everything.

~Rusty

... off the skyvision link above, gives you the table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_east.html as well as another table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_west.html which list what is available on FTA, as well as whether you can just use a C band lnb, or if you need a ku band lnb as well.

I don't know who to recomend to find out what of those feeds might be of interest to you.

My own big-dish experience is pretty much limited to C-band reception pre FTA equipment. For my needs a single lnb with rotation provided sufficient tunning. Rotation for v/h happened a lot faster than traversing from one sat to the next. Using 'intelegent' transponder selection also worked well until I inserted channels to be skipped. (Since all the even transponders or oriented one way, and the odd transponders the other, 'intellegent' selection walks through either even, or odd until it gets to the end of the list, then switches to the odd or even and rotates the lnb as appropriate.)

Going with a multi-head lnb, would mean that you would only be adjusting the rotation on a per sat basis. You will probably need to get extra rg-6 cable however if you are going to get multi-C and multi-ku lnbs, as you will need a feed for each lnb receiver, and in my experience the ribion cable out there consists of two rg-6 feeds, and control leads for both the rotors and the drive arms.

One other accessory you may want to look into is the lnb feed horn adapter to allow you to run your DirecTV receiver off your big dish. http://www.skyvision.com/store/mi5034007.html

I do have one, and so long as you are only looking at the one sat location, everything seems to look great. Theoretically you will get better reception, though this will depend upon how good you are at mounting everything.

~Rusty

... off the skyvision link above, gives you the table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_east.html as well as another table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_west.html which list what is available on FTA, as well as whether you can just use a C band lnb, or if you need a ku band lnb as well.

I don't know who to recomend to find out what of those feeds might be of interest to you.

My own big-dish experience is pretty much limited to C-band reception pre FTA equipment. For my needs a single lnb with rotation provided sufficient tunning. Rotation for v/h happened a lot faster than traversing from one sat to the next. Using 'intelegent' transponder selection also worked well until I inserted channels to be skipped. (Since all the even transponders or oriented one way, and the odd transponders the other, 'intellegent' selection walks through either even, or odd until it gets to the end of the list, then switches to the odd or even and rotates the lnb as appropriate.)

Going with a multi-head lnb, would mean that you would only be adjusting the rotation on a per sat basis. You will probably need to get extra rg-6 cable however if you are going to get multi-C and multi-ku lnbs, as you will need a feed for each lnb receiver, and in my experience the ribion cable out there consists of two rg-6 feeds, and control leads for both the rotors and the drive arms.

One other accessory you may want to look into is the lnb feed horn adapter to allow you to run your DirecTV receiver off your big dish. http://www.skyvision.com/store/mi5034007.html

I do have one, and so long as you are only looking at the one sat location, everything seems to look great. Theoretically you will get better reception, though this will depend upon how good you are at mounting everything.

~Rusty

My favorite satellite place is SkyVision. They have big dish and small dish stuff.......

-m