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Free-to-Air TV and Radio?
ChiaBen asks: "I was visiting a friend recently who has a Free-to-air satellite receiver. It allows him to pick up any free satellite TV and radio programs, along with many pay-to-view (requires a payment, of course) programs. Nokia has a receiver, and I'd like to know if else is making similar hardware. It seems interesting, but before I drop a few hundred bones on one, I'd like to know what everyone has to say about it?"
pretty much any desirable mainstream content is encrypted or scrambled now (at least in the us), even on the 'big dish'. there are, of course ways around it.. but that's a whole different ball game and isn't exactly 'free' when you get caught either..
back in 'the day', it wasn't uncommon to find network feeds (being sent to affilliates ahead of the actual air date, very popular among bab5 & trek fans) and raw feeds from sporting events. bulletin boards (bbs's) that were dedicated to this 'hobby' were around so you could find out where and when to point your dish to pick those signals. but last i was in front of a big dish, most of those things were scrambled. most everything is digital (and also encrypted) these days..
i can remember spending time out in the backhills of west virginia. there was a huge cottage industry involving setting up a 'free' dish and 'broken' receiver. dunno if it's like that today (this was ~10 yrs ago), probably not as the move to digital (which is theoretically easier to protect) was just kicking into high gear about then. i just found it rather amusing to see pickup trucks, to numerous to count, hauling around 6 foot dishes and going door-to-door.
There is a lot of honestly free data coming off of the sattelites. NASA, for example has their live feed channel(s). Not only are they fine with you catching those signals, much of their stuff is public domain by law. (stuff that is produced by contractors might still be copyright). Then there's all sorts of interesting telemetry. If you know how to decode it, I'd expect that much of NASA's survey imagery is also unencrypted.
The stuff that's encrypted, is probably going to be illegal to decode (according to the DMCA). The stuff that just has wierd encoding, however, should be free to decode. If you only use it personally, then you're almost guaranteed to be safe (IANAL). If you want to use it commercially, then you need to make sure that you're using government data that is (1) public domain and (1) not 'top secret' ( although somebody at the NSA should be shot if they're still transmitting top secret data unencrypted.)
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
You could always spend your cash on moving to the UK where we are well served with free to air programs via Freesat and Freeview. I use Freeview which works through your existing aerial and has all the channels I need. The cost of the decoders has plummeted in recent months. I paid about £100 18 months ago. You can now get them from the supermarket for less than £30. There are paid for channels available on Freeview if you want them and, of course Sky satellite.
The way to see this stuff is with one of those old 3 meter dishes from the 80's. The problem is that it is likely your community has laws against such things being allowed in your yard (although most of the time you can put up a fence or something to hide it). I always said I would never live in a placee that has such restrictions (I want to put up a tower someday), but it is getting harder and harder to find a place that has no such restrictions that is affordable. The 100 acre ranch would be ideal, but not gonna happen on my salary.
They say there was a time when people wanted to see telephone and power wires because it meant progress. Now we have to hide infrastructure underground, lest we offend the eye...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
You'll also quickly find out that most of the information about "free to air" receivers is actually put up under the guise of providing information for a similar and considerably more common activity; reprogramming the receivers with firmware that can decrypt, in software, the encryption schemes used by Dish Network and Bell ExpressVu (who both use the DVB standard for their broadcasts, DirecTV uses a proprietary standard).
Because I wasn't really sure about FTA I wanted to get into it as cheaply as possible. I bought a cheap 0.3dB LNB and a truly crappy receiver on eBay, used an old Primestar 40" x 30" dish (which turns out to be one of the best dishes you can get for FTA), hooked it all up, got it aimed at Intelsat Americas 5 and started watching! I think my total equipment investment was in the neighborhood of $100. I did replace my craptastic receiver with a more expensive ($150 at the time) Fortec Lifetime Classic, but it was worth it. You can, as others have said, go with PC-based solutions, too - PCI or USB satellite receivers - but I wanted a standalone receiver just to start.
Yes, as others have pointed out, most of what's available via FTA in North America is religious programming or bizarre foreign channels, but don't let that discourage you! First of all, that stuff ranges from entertaining to totally weird (like the old animated Star Trek series dubbed in Armenian, or some damned thing). If you're sick of the crap on American TV, this'll definitely give you something more interesting to check out. Second, there are some American channels up there, especially PBS and the like, but some network affiliates as well. And if you're really determined, you can find network feeds, where the networks send their shows to their affiliate stations in the clear, before they officially air. You can also find news crews out in the field, often doing flattering things like swearing and picking their noses before as they set up and test their equipment before a remote report.
FTA is like the Wild West of television. It's not always easy to find the good stuff, but it's worth the effort.
Check out the SatelliteGuys forum if you want more information. The people there are extremely friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. I'm just a user there, not an admin or owner, so I'm not trying to shill for the site or anything. I just love it.