Anyone own a free to air satellite system

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Mar 15, 2003
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I'm thinking of possibly replacing dishnetwork with a rooftop antenna plus a free to air system, mostly for fun/hobby. I don't want to do anything illegal, but am curious to see what it would pull in without hacking /stealing.

Anyone have a system? Any comments?
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
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www.neftastic.com
Used to have a C/Ku big dish in the back yard when I was growing up. Pretty much every channel out there was out there at the time, plus you'd get funky stuff like network live feeds and crap, you'd get to see the bloopers as they happened. I remember when FX first came online - kickass channel back then. They played all the old shit like A-Team and The Green Hornet, all unscrambled. Porn channels galore too, some of the Canadian ones were unscrambled.

Kind of fell by the wayside after a while though. It was hard to keep up with the channels, plus there was about 30 different satellites you had to keep track of, each with 24 or more channels, different polarities for each channel, and a total of 4 different bands within the C and Ku spectra. It would really suck if you had to move the dish from one horizon to the other, it took a couple minutes usually to do that. And of course, there's moving parts, so the whole thing would just die, especially in winter.

I think now pretty much anything worth watching is on the Ku band sats, and most of it is encrypted or proprietary now too.
 
Mar 15, 2003
12,668
103
106
Used to have a C/Ku big dish in the back yard when I was growing up. Pretty much every channel out there was out there at the time, plus you'd get funky stuff like network live feeds and crap, you'd get to see the bloopers as they happened. I remember when FX first came online - kickass channel back then. They played all the old shit like A-Team and The Green Hornet, all unscrambled. Porn channels galore too, some of the Canadian ones were unscrambled.

Kind of fell by the wayside after a while though. It was hard to keep up with the channels, plus there was about 30 different satellites you had to keep track of, each with 24 or more channels, different polarities for each channel, and a total of 4 different bands within the C and Ku spectra. It would really suck if you had to move the dish from one horizon to the other, it took a couple minutes usually to do that. And of course, there's moving parts, so the whole thing would just die, especially in winter.

I think now pretty much anything worth watching is on the Ku band sats, and most of it is encrypted or proprietary now too.

Thanks for the info - I didn't know that the satellite had to be physically moved!

Is there any tech out there that can just replace the dishnetwork receiver? Again, not for piracy, I'd be happy with unencrypted channels
 

joutlaw

Golden Member
Feb 18, 2008
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My understanding is that FTA has been cracked down for a while. DirecTV has been out of the picture for years and I think Dish finally got their electronic countermeasures solid around a year ago.

When it was in it's glory days it was a lot of work to keep up even then.

I'm sure you could pick up a good bit of foreign stations if you pointed to the right bird, but FTA just isn't as popular in the US for legitimate purposes.
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
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FTA still has tons of channels, but don't expect to see USA or cable type channels. Most of them are foreign, independent channels. Some stations still broadcast in the clear like c-span but they are on c-band still I think .

As for commercial systems, directv has been hack free for about 4 years now . Dish just updated their system so it is secure for now, though that will likely change for them. Dish always uses outside contractors for their systems, where directv keeps it in house making it very hard to near impossible to get information on how it all works.
 

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
Jan 2, 2001
32,674
146
106
www.neftastic.com
Thanks for the info - I didn't know that the satellite had to be physically moved!

Is there any tech out there that can just replace the dishnetwork receiver? Again, not for piracy, I'd be happy with unencrypted channels

Well keep in mind, a GOOD dish setup has an actuator on it, meaning your satellite box does this for you. However you still have to manually set everything up unless you plan on paying top dollar to get everything properly and accurately automated.
 

Pepsei

Lifer
Dec 14, 2001
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My understanding is that FTA has been cracked down for a while. DirecTV has been out of the picture for years and I think Dish finally got their electronic countermeasures solid around a year ago.

When it was in it's glory days it was a lot of work to keep up even then.

I'm sure you could pick up a good bit of foreign stations if you pointed to the right bird, but FTA just isn't as popular in the US for legitimate purposes.

Yeah, earlier this year Dish finally moved to N3 encryption which has yet to be cracked, that pretty much turn most of the older FTA boxes to paperweight if they were used exclusively for illegal purpose.
 

bobdole369

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2004
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I'd be happy with unencrypted channels

The only thing unecnrypted is really religious stuff, foreign language stuff (like jesus in cuba), and the occasional news station in english.

You won't see MTV or Hme and Garden, or even CNN without a subscribed card anymore.

In fact here is the list of whats on what bird. If you see "nagravision 3" thats encryupted and you can't see it. They can't tell what it is either so its simply "dish".

http://www.lyngsat.com/echo9galaxy23.html
(probably the best sat up there for FTA)

http://www.lyngsat.com/america.html

Main site to see all the sats in orbit.

DVB is what dish puts out, as well as a number of people. You just need to connect the DVB receiver (very common in europe) - or this software with a PCI or PCIe or USB DVB receiver card:

http://www.tsreader.com/legacy/

Point your sat, instruct the card to read the right freqs and there ya go.
 
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