Slashdot Mirror
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?"
I'm trying to assume that you are making a joke here. Yet, I'm not so sure that's how you mean this to be taken.
Free to Air or FTA Satellite TV has nothing to do with stealing content. The systems and broadcasters that want to protect their content have, using multiple encryption schemes. But there are birds up there that still have plenty of unscrambled content on them. It is *exactly* the same as putting an arial on your roof and receiving your local TV stations directly and telling your cable company to take a long walk.
This has nothing to do with trying to force / crack security ala DirecTV access cards to receive pay content for nothing. Please note the difference.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
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.
If you want non-English language programming or local programming, there is still tons of stuff being broadcast for free from satellites. Satellite Guys is one of the best sources for info. Check out their forums, specifically the Free to Air one. Here's a list of what is available up there for free.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Forget a stand-alone reciever. They're very inflexible, and a bit expensive for what you get.
Meanwhile, a PCI DVB-S card can be as cheap as $50, and with software decoding, you can play 4:2:2 streams, HDTV streams, free IP access from some satellites, and you don't need to worry about whether or not the reciever manufacturer will fix any bugs in it's firmware, or whether or not one reciever has an difficult to use menu system, etc.
Disclaimer: I don't have either, but I've been looking at info all around the net (user reviews, forums, etc), deciding the same thing myself, over the past few weeks.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.