Satellite Programming for Free?

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?"

Comments

Why not?

[DynaSoar]

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.

Lots of stuff in FTA satellite feeds

[hectorh]

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

Actually, 1m and smaller

[smalloy]

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/satellite.html

A few restrictions for historic buildings, safety concerns, etc.

Think of a better reason.

[fm6]

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 writ. The reality is that it's not even applicable most of the time, and even when it is, it's damned hard to prove that you deserve that kind of compensation.

And here's the biggest issue of all: right or wrong, win or lose, you gotta live with these people. Do you really want to teach them to hate you so badly, they'll be looking for every little chance to get even? You might be able to force them to let you have a sat dish, but then they'll be watching you like the proverbial hawk. Every little violation will earn you the worst punishment they can manage.

Which can extend to seizing your home and turning you out on the street. Which is not as unlikely as it sounds. There was a case recently where this happened because a couple forgot to pay a $200 dollar fee.

The times, they are a-changin'

[mhollis]

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.

Free to Air porn

[ahfoo]

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.