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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?"
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.
My Nana and Grandad goes on Holiday a lot in their Caravan, they used to use Sky Satellite in the Caravan which they found to be very expensive. However, my Grandad then switched over to using a simple freesat system which suits their needs. It recieves BBC, ITV etc which is what they want! I did see on ebay a Satellite Box running Linux (I think it was called Dream Box) and I heard you could load decryption keys onto it for the Sky Channels. However, that is illegal!
Where's the flood of April First stories? Do I have the date wrong? Is the lack of them the joke? Am I not getting the jokes?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Try Satellite Guys. There are a bunch of ppl there who are way into satellite tv stuff and who are eager to help.
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.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Free to air statellite has been big in Europe since the 1980s, and digital (DVD-S) since the 1990s.
Hacked Linux-based receivers have pretty much dominated the European DVB-S market for the last decade, and especialy in FTA.
It's a shame that it has had little attention from Slashdot and other mainstream open source media over the years, because that has left the field free for some pretty unsavoury people in the TV encryption cracking market.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that cracked satellite receivers were up there with cracked routers as a major source of Linux malware.
There's a lot of random free stuff out there. This list is pretty up to date usually. You'll need something motorized though...
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
I grew up with this as my only source of TV in the 80s and 90s (we were too far from town and lived in the mountains to use local over the air tv). We had an 8' dish though and it must have weighed well in excess of 26lbs so yes your dish is quite light. We never seemed to have issues finding channels with something to watch and were able to pickup news, cartoons (very important), shows, and movies. The main issue was that the channels had to be scanned manually then. There were two sets of numbers, the first number if I remember correctly would physically rotate the dish outside then the second number would scan the channel options available available at that dish angle. This took a lot of time and ended up with us writing down the common locations for shows that we wanted to watch. Today I would hope there is an auto-scan feature that would allow you to just scan the channels to see what you're able to receive and store those. Unfortunately I haven't used this system in more than 10 years so I'm not very knowledgeable on what the system is like to use today. Hopefully something in my post was useful to you or someone else reading through.
Saying "all faiths are equivalent" is akin to saying "all drugs are the same".
Interestingly (perhaps) the UK has a lot of free-to-air content, and satellite in particular is popular because lots of people have mini-dishes on their houses from their own or a previous Sky TV installation. Freesat doesn't get as much coverage as Freeview but you can still walk into your local electronics retailer and find a big-brand satellite PVR next to the other TV hardware.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The satellite providers should provide some free basic tv with no monthly fees and just charge the full cost of equipment or allow people to use their own equipment and then make the additional revenue on the advertising side. Other paid cable channels could be an up sell with monthly subscriptions or pay per view. If the satellite providers presented a sufficiently attractive mix of advertising supported channels for cord cutters, then it would be a no brainer for people just to add satellite to their household mix of entertainment options for a couple hundred bucks worth of equipment. The number of viewers would go up by many millions. It really would be an opportunity for a win for the public and a big win for the satellite companies.
A better selection of free over the air advertising supported broadcasts are something that is really missing from the current market.
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.
It was old news before this site started so that's probably why it hasn't been discussed.
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.
Years ago I used to be infatuated with the BUD, so much so that when I visited my uncle, he'd save me the program guides and channel lists he used to get in the mail. Then along came Lyngsat, which tells you all of that. http://lyngsat.com/
But more importantly for you, they will tell you if a channel is encrypted or not on whatever satellite. So the *best* way to tell if FTA TV is going to be worth it to you. It's largely a joke in the US, but a slightly more serious deal in other countries. Lyngsat also has a precompiled list of Free TV in the "US", although it still shows satellites you can't see over here. Still, it's a good way of having some idea of what you'd get. TL;DR: if you're not an immigrant that speaks a foreign language or a very religious person, there's next to nothing worth watching on FTA satellite in the US; I do not know for sure if the "local" channels that are uplinked to satellites are actually FTA or not; since they control the distribution of them I'd have to say the list is incorrect. Maybe it's not.
I did some research into this when I was first transitioning to a LCD HDTV. At the time there wasn't quite enough to make the transition worth it. Now between Hulu, Netflix, FTA antenna tv, and a few other streaming sources I'm looking at this again to fill the gaps. DVB-S is supported by WMC and would offer you a descent way to combine Antenna and FTA Satellite services. Take a look into this if you find the DVR included with your kit lacking. I am not sure if you could set this up with MythTV and XBMC. You can add a motorized mount to this kit if you find you need it. If you are doing a roof mount you may want to order it now. The extra cost now may be worth not having to scale your home twice. If you're doing a deck mount then no worries! ;)
Coffee: The lifeblood of intelligence in civilization.
It's the same thing in Canada. Even flyers have mixed units. I saw a tile cutter on sale at Canadian Tire, which had the following specifications: can cut tiles up to 12" wide, 12 mm thick.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Motorized? Not really, look up toroidal antennas. You can hang up to 16 LNBs off of those babies to cover 40 degrees of sky.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
there are a ton of **free** streaming sites that just host links...
I watch all shows the day they are released
free-tv-video-online.me/
watchfreemovies.ch/
tubepulus.me
many others
Thank you Dave Raggett
I dabbled a little few years ago but there really not much interests me. Taking a look at Galaxy 19 lyngsat.com as suggested by Isao has stations of little interest to me. However, it was interesting to get some hands-on experience receiving signals from a satellite, ironically the day I first locked on to bird in the Clarke Belt was the same day Arthur died.
Also back then there were websites that you can download software and load this into one of those sat receivers and be able to watch DishTV, Direct, and other encrypted sites for free. However, these didn't offer much (I have no interest in football, soccer, hockey which all have 200 channels each). There were some premimun channels like TCM that I already have on cable, but then I may also dump cable because even TCM shows same movies over and over again (occasionally they will show something different i.e. a series of Mamie Van Doren movies). There were "local" TV stations from various towns like Bakersfield on these dish tv stations. But then almost all I have no interest so why bother.
Getting back to when I setup my satellite receiver. Someone at DeAnza Electronics flea market was selling DishTV Ku-band dishes and oddball sat receiver boxes for dirt cheap, had a whole stack of these and didn't want to crate them all to the dump. Living in a condo reduced my opportunities (all the birds were aligned away from my windows), I was not interested in mounting the dish on a awning of sorts (I was experimenting and had no long term deployment interest). I was able to just fit the dish into my skylight, borrowed a sat finder meter to help lock onto the bird, and it was exciting to see the bars all light up on the satellite receiver box (Comet I think was the brand). Go through the motions to select the frequencies and download the channels. It seemed it was more interesting technically than watching entertainment (again almost all channels were of no interest). I also referred to these sites, http://www.uksatellitehelp.co.... and http://emantechnology.com/stor.... There were some channels that were non-encrypted including NASA-TV Public channel (and this was back when Shuttle was flying). However these stations were able to do encryption far more difficult to hack, and they also encrypted all channels including "FTA" like NASA-TV.
Now there is C-band birds which NASA-TV provides non-encrypted including the Media channel but the antennas are big and hard to find. However, NASA-TV mostly has usual drivel repeated over and over. There was a time when everyone was dumping C-band dishes for free and great opportunity for experimentalists including those wanting a dish to do EME.
mfwright@batnet.com
No. It's not. Intelligent people get their information from the source, and not biased bloggers and reporters. Your bloggers are not scions of fact. That would be like us using Huffington Post to "prove" something. No reason to do that. It is just another opinion. We don't cite NBC or ABC or any reporter as proof of anything.
Real information comes from records, and not anecdotes, or suspicions. The fact is that you don't know if the ACA will be a net positive or negative because you haven't given it time to even be implemented and the market to adjust. It will be at least 4 years before we know what the effects are. All you have are predictions about how it will ruin the country.
The voting record of congress is a citation you can use for proof. Breitbart is just another person's opinion. They teach this stuff in critical thinking classes. You might check it out. You could learn the difference between a reliable citation source and an opinion.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
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.
Back in the late 70s my grandfather got a big satellite dish for his home in the mountains (US), where normal broadcast TV reception was very bad. A 6 foot dish though, with a motor. But it picked up a lot of major channels for free because they didn't encrypt them. Ie, HBO. And this was the time when cable outside of major cities was still rare.
I think for a long time many stations would just not bother to encrypt when transmitting between stations (ie, a microwave link from San Francisco to San Jose) because they assumed that the equipment to intercept was very expensive and it wasn't worth the effort to encrypt.