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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.