Ask Slashdot: Experiences With Free To Air Satellite TV?

Dishwasha (125561) writes "Just a few days ago I incidentally discovered a little known secret called free-to-air. Amazingly enough even in the depths of Slashdot, there appear to have been no postings or discussions about it. Just like over-the-air programming, there is free programming available via various satellite systems that only requires a one-time cost of getting a dish and receiver. Both Amazon and Ebay appear to have a plethora of hardware out there. I personally settled on the Geosatpro MicroHD system with a 90cm 26lbs light-weight dish (queue lots of comments about my describing 26 lbs as being light-weight) and I should be receiving that in just a few days. I'm curious, who else is using satellite FTA? What are your setups? Has anyone hacked on any of the DVR/PVR devices available? Besides greater access to international programming, what are your channel experiences?"

Comments

Big Ugly Dishes

[Anonymous Coward]

C and KU band is a big investment, and I think most places encrypt these transmissions now, so you might want to check around a little more to make absolutely sure you're going to get anything worthwhile.

Re:Big Ugly Dishes

[schnell]

I think people here (and throughout this thread) are conflating a few different things when they say "free TV." The following explanation is an oversimplification, but anyway...

In the US, back in the '70s and '80s, there was "free" satellite TV. The reason that it was free, though, is that you weren't supposed to have it. Big TV networks, HBO, ESPN, all those guys used analog C-band satellite transmissions to distribute their content to local TV affiliates and early cable TV providers. People discovered that if you bought your own analog C-band dish (the big 6+ footers) you could tap into those transmissions and watch them for free, and a cottage industry sprung up around getting people hooked into this feed. Note that it wasn't like "pay" satellite TV today where you point your dish at one satellite that gives you all the channels you subscribe to - you actually had to point your dish at different satellites to get different content feeds.

The content providers got upset about this and migrated to digital delivery, which could be encrypted. You could still buy de-scrambler gear for your home dish (not so legally) but for most people it was enough of a PITA that they just moved over to a paid cable TV service (whose reaches were growing in leaps and bounds then) or to one of the emerging paid satellite TV services, which sprang up to meet precisely this need. You still have DISH and DirecTV as the two main US paid satellite TV providers today, and they use higher frequencies than C-band (Ku or Ka) which enable those nice little .75m dishes you see everywhere today.

Elsewhere in the world, "Free To Air" TV has always had much more content. In my very limited experience, it's either state-funded TV like the BBC, or it's some other party that buys transponder space on a satellite and says "Okay, here it is for whoever wants to watch it." When travelling internationally I occasionally see ads for FTA TV, but it always seems to be creepy Phillipine megachurches or Al Jazeera wannabes that just can't get their content distributed any other way. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Are you in the USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then there's no allot you can watch, everything is encrypted. Dish Network was popular with these systems, you could run software on the FTA receiver and pirate the signal. That's gone, so unless you live in a country with UN-encrypted programming it's a waste of money. You can use these systems, but the dish would need to be motorized. It's just not worth the money, there is no free TV in the USA anymore (Beyond an antenna).

Re:Are you in the USA?

[CityZen]

Lyngsat is the best place I have seen to get information about what programming is available. However, its organization takes some getting used to.

The page linked above shows the programming that originates from the US but is broadcast around the world. Similar pages can be used to find programming originating from other countries. However, you need to understand what satellites are viewable from your location.

Other pages are those that show what's available from satellites you can see, such as: http://www.lyngsat.com/america...
This page shows the satellites that broadcast to the US, ranging from 61.5 W way over toward the east to 139 W way over toward the west. If you are located on the east coast, you may have trouble receiving 139 W unless you have a clear line of site toward the west and a perhaps larger-than-typical dish. Similarly, if you are located on the west coast, you may have trouble receiving 61.5 W. Satellites that are more directly overhead your particular longitude will typically be easier to receive. You can find your own longitude very easily by googling your zip code plus "longitude".

Once you're looking at a particular satellite, say Galaxy 19: http://www.lyngsat.com/Galaxy-...
then you need to understand the information that's presented. The first table lists frequencies in the ~4000 range, which corresponds to C-band. To receive these, you need a "BUD" (big ugly dish) of size 6-12 feet (2-4m). The next table lists frequencies in the ~12000 range, which corresponds to Ku-band. These can be received with a 30" (0.75m) dish.

The next columns to pay attention to are the provider name and the system encryption. Look for the "F" icon in the encryption column, indicating that the channel is FTA. Also confirm that the first entry for the transponder in question shows "DVB-S" (or "DVB-S2") and that this is compatible with the receiver you have. The first entry provides info about the multiplexed stream, whereas the subsequent entries provide info about each individual channel within the stream. A decent receiver will be able to figure out all these details itself, but older hardware requires programming in some details.

There's really a couple of ways to use FTA. One is to just set up a system locked to a given satellite and stick with a channel or small set of channels that are stable. The other way is to hop around different satellites and see what's available, since programming does change over time. For this, it's important that your receiver has "blind search" capability (which should be pretty common by now, but you should verify). Having the ability to program the channels easily with a computer program is another nice feature that many receivers offer. This can be a lot better than fiddling with the remote and endless menu layers. And, of course, a motorized dish mount makes it easier to change satellites.

A final word before you embark on this: Lots of these channels have online viewing options, which can be much less frustrating to view (or they can offer a different type of frustration). At least you won't have to fiddle outside with dish alignment on a rainy day to peak the signal. You can instead learn about proxies from the comfort of your desktop.

Helpful Website

[Huntr]

Try Satellite Guys. There are a bunch of ppl there who are way into satellite tv stuff and who are eager to help.

You were living under what stone?

[Teun]

I haven't played with North American satellite for years so I can only comment on the European situation.

Over here there is an absolute plethora of FTA satellite channels.

Many, if not most, are junk. Porn previews and selling crappy stuff.
But there are still many dozens quality channels like the BBC and the various German stations.BR> Just about every country has one or more FTA channels and as most people (outside of France and the UK) speak or at least understand several languages there is for people like me sufficient on offer.

Don't expect it to be Cable

[Controlio]

As someone who puts those shows up in the air, I'll tell you it all depends on what you're looking for.

If you're looking for sports backhauls, you'll most likely be disappointed. Almost every professional sports venue in the country uses fiber as a backhaul, not satellite. The only places that use birds are places that do small numbers of broadcasts infrequently (think college campuses). And even then, a lot of networks have policies that require them to use BISS encryption. So unless you're friends with someone in the uplink world (because yes, they do share downlink info and BISS codes with each other so they can watch live events while on the road) you'll find the content to be sparse.

If you're looking for TV networks, look at it this way. If there's any value to the network (i.e. if it's on anything but the base tier of your cable or satellite operator), it's encrypted. Because why would they give away for free what they're getting $1.60/subscriber to sell? You'll find some foreign networks and stuff you most likely don't care about, but that's about it. If you know the timing you might find syndicated shows being fed to your local TV stations (think Ellen or Judge Judy) or something mildly useful like that, but even more of those shows are now being BISS encrypted. The only reason more syndicated shows don't encrypt is because they get sick of having to pay to re-feed shows because of inept downlink ops.

The holy grail for FTA is finding "wild feeds" - temporary uplinks from site to a network (think breaking news). You can find some serious hilarity here sometimes. But the feeds come and go in a matter of quarter hours, so they're tougher to find.

The feeds are out there, but there's not a lot of FTA ones in North America. Further complicating things is the myriad of encoding specs (bitrate, constellation, FEC, encoder model, etc etc etc). It ends up being a total crapshoot trying to find things. So I guess what I'm saying is it depends on what you're looking for. If you're doing this as a hobby to see what you can find, it can be a lot of fun and even rewarding at times. If you're looking to replace cable, you're going to wish you'd spent your money on a Roku or a Slingbox at your friend's house instead.

Great hobby, essential to get ethnic programming

[Isao]

I've been running FTA receiver setups in the US for about a decade, so my data comes from that. My own setup uses 3 dishes (one with multiple satellites), and I operate two others at different locations. I have relatives in Europe who've been doing this for longer, and it's very easy and common over there. It's pretty rare in the US. I started because some family members wanted to receive ethnic programming in their own languages and I love to experiment. It requires some practice to set up and aim, but is very doable and doesn't have to be expensive. You can get started under $300US. Take a look at Sadoun in Texas. He also has a lot of information for beginners.

You'll need a dish (typically 90cm), somewhere with a view of your selected satellites to plant it, an LNB to go on the dish (Low Noise Block Amplifier, the actual "antenna"; the dish is just a reflector), a bunch of RG6 cable leading to your TV, and a receiver.

Before buying all this, take a look at the various satellites and channels available to you, and pick a starting satellite. You'll need to be sure that you have a clear line of sight to the "bird". A great site for this is lyngsat. In the US I suggest starting with Galaxy 19, which has several hundred channels on it.

Summarizing the rest, plant the dish, aim, and scan with your receiver to program the channels. You can get all sorts of things regularly, and occasional "wild feeds" that aren't intended for public consumption. There's also encrypted video, which is either pay TV, private company channels (like Ford, etc.) or network backhauls.

Later on you can get into multiple satellites, either with multiple LNB's on one dish, multiple dishes and a switch, or a motorized (!) dish. They're all fun.

It's a lot of fun, and can be a great intro for kids to electronics, radio reception, satellites, orbital mechanics, space, etc.

Re:April First?????

[PIBM]

Snow in trees was problematic too. It`s like permanent rain. I live in the middle of a forest and I even took the extra work of bringing electricity, cable and phone through ground entrances, so I wasn`t about to cut trees for my satellite, which I wasn`t using that much at my previous location. And heating trees wasn`t a part of the solution :)

The gear came as a free goodie with a television purchase years before, with free to air access and 3 years of free subscription to a service. I`ve used the service a bit, but the FTA wasn`t worth investing in a bigger or better dish and I didn`t want a large ugly one somewhere either.

Oh well, that was for me. At this time, I get all I want from my internet connection and rented blurays at 1$ a pop in those auto-dispensers.

Satellite TV

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife and I live on a boat in Europe and have used satellite tv - free to air - for around 15 years. Receive about 340 channels from Astra 2 of which around 100 are worth having - news, drama, documentary, film, old show re-runs etc. Our dish is 85cm and receiver an (now) old Technomate which can pick up any satellite available so we have cover of thousands of programmes from Korea to Brazil. As we cruise rivers and canals we have to retune daily by rotating dish and varying up-angle for different satellites.

Re:Its pretty good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it is not free. Just to have that dish or that TV you have to pay a tax. We have no such tax requirements.