Free-to-Air Satellite Questions?

Anonym1ty asks: "I am currently looking into MPEG2 DVB FTA (Free-to-air) satellite systems and was wondering what experiences others have had with it. What type of systems are better? Multi-LNB or Rotor? What is the content like on the FTA end? I am not really interested in ways to get premium services for free, I'm looking into it as a pass-time just to see what is out there. With box/dish combos around $300.00 I want to know can I really find neat stuff out there, or is it just foreign language stuff with the occasional random broadcaster? I'm looking into this not from a TV viewer's angle, but more like an upgrade for a scanner/SWL listener's perspective."

Comments

some answers

[poningru]

You have two fronts to look into first is the box: Even though there are readymade boxes that you can buy to recieve the feeds, I would say that you should look into buying a DVB card and puting together a dedicated comp for this. Now about the computer software: You have choice of going complex or simple, if you want to go simple just pick a distro of your choice and use vlan, however Mythtv has just started adding DVB support, I would say that you should look into that for a full fledged media center PC. Now Hardware: you have to decide whether to get a Hardware (expensive) driven card or a cheaper card that leaves the decoding to the CPU, obviously if you have a card that does the decoding you dont need a teribly fast cpu.

now for the dish, obviously as you know the bigger the better, with the bigger dishes you have the ability to recieve both C & ku band. Now attempting to recieve both into one dish is ok as long as you get a feedhorn. I could go into details but this site shows a lot more

Now as far as channels go nothing beats lyngsat. they have crazy ass searches for example all the free satelite channels in the US.

A barrel of fun - do it.

[general_boy]

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.