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Television Media Communications

Free-to-Air Satellite Questions? 16

Posted by Cliff from the what-is-out-there dept.
Anonym1ty asks: "I am currently looking into MPEG2 DVB FTA (Free-to-air) satellite systems and was wondering what experiences others have had with it. What type of systems are better? Multi-LNB or Rotor? What is the content like on the FTA end? I am not really interested in ways to get premium services for free, I'm looking into it as a pass-time just to see what is out there. With box/dish combos around $300.00 I want to know can I really find neat stuff out there, or is it just foreign language stuff with the occasional random broadcaster? I'm looking into this not from a TV viewer's angle, but more like an upgrade for a scanner/SWL listener's perspective."
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Free-to-Air Satellite Questions? More

Free-to-Air Satellite Questions?

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  • I've wondered as well (Score:3, Interesting)

    by invisik ( 227250 ) * on Friday April 29, 2005 @06:39PM (#12389031)
    Most I hear is there's no good free feeds left to be worth it. I've love to get some feeds from europe and africa, but that programming doesn't reach the US.

    My favorite satellite place is SkyVision [skyvision.com]. They have big dish and small dish stuff.......

    -m

    • NASA TV is nice, I haven't seen much other than that, as my highschool's reciever unit got taken out by lightning when I was a freshman. Also, if I remember correctly, you can watch alot of raw news feeds.
      • NASA TV is now available on the standard DirecTV packages. They must have moved the channel from their "oval dish" system as when I inquired about it last year they said that's what I needed to receive it.

        -m
        • They still broadcast it C band, the only difference is they are migrating to a DVB MPEG-2 signal. You can read about this on the NASA-TV website [nasa.gov]:
          The new Digital NASA TV will be on the same satellite (AMC 6) as current analog NASA TV, but on a different transponder (17). In Alaska and Hawaii, we'll be on AMC 7, Transponder 18.

  • Check out www.dbstalk.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by /dev/trash ( 182850 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @07:33PM (#12389378) Homepage Journal
    Lots of good discussion there.

  • some answers (Score:5, Informative)

    by poningru ( 831416 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @08:15PM (#12389606)
    You have two fronts to look into first is the box: Even though there are readymade boxes that you can buy to recieve the feeds, I would say that you should look into buying a DVB card and puting together a dedicated comp for this. Now about the computer software: You have choice of going complex or simple, if you want to go simple just pick a distro of your choice and use vlan, however Mythtv has just started adding DVB support, I would say that you should look into that for a full fledged media center PC. Now Hardware: you have to decide whether to get a Hardware (expensive) driven card or a cheaper card that leaves the decoding to the CPU, obviously if you have a card that does the decoding you dont need a teribly fast cpu.

    now for the dish, obviously as you know the bigger the better, with the bigger dishes you have the ability to recieve both C & ku band. Now attempting to recieve both into one dish is ok as long as you get a feedhorn. I could go into details but this site shows a lot more [satcure.co.uk]

    Now as far as channels go nothing beats lyngsat. [lyngsat.com] they have crazy ass searches for example all the free satelite channels in the US. [lyngsat.com]

  • free to air on PC... and not so free for free :-) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @11:45PM (#12390501)
    If you want to use a PC, its real easy. You can get a card (Hauppauge Nexus or Twinhan) and any dish network or directv dish will work, it really doesnt matter. If you want to get fancy you can mount the dish on a motor and the cards will be able to point the dish using DiSEqC.

    Look into the following software if you get a DVB-S card for the PC ...

    ProgDVB = Software tuner with plugin architecture.
    Yankse = Pugin that acts as softcam,needs keys to work (use fenrir).
    Fenrir = Plugin that autorolls the new satellite keys.

    Pretty easy, use the DVBN forum for more info : http://www.dvbnetwork.com/ [dvbnetwork.com]

    ProgDVB Website - http://www.progdvb.com/ [progdvb.com]
    Yankse/Fenrir Website - http://yankse.dvbnetwork.com/download.html [dvbnetwork.com]

  • Just a bit of digging.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by rusty0101 ( 565565 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @12:31AM (#12390638) Homepage Journal
    ... off the skyvision link above, gives you the table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_east.html [skyvision.com] as well as another table at http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_ mpeg2_no_am_west.html [skyvision.com] which list what is available on FTA, as well as whether you can just use a C band lnb, or if you need a ku band lnb as well.

    I don't know who to recomend to find out what of those feeds might be of interest to you.

    My own big-dish experience is pretty much limited to C-band reception pre FTA equipment. For my needs a single lnb with rotation provided sufficient tunning. Rotation for v/h happened a lot faster than traversing from one sat to the next. Using 'intelegent' transponder selection also worked well until I inserted channels to be skipped. (Since all the even transponders or oriented one way, and the odd transponders the other, 'intellegent' selection walks through either even, or odd until it gets to the end of the list, then switches to the odd or even and rotates the lnb as appropriate.)

    Going with a multi-head lnb, would mean that you would only be adjusting the rotation on a per sat basis. You will probably need to get extra rg-6 cable however if you are going to get multi-C and multi-ku lnbs, as you will need a feed for each lnb receiver, and in my experience the ribion cable out there consists of two rg-6 feeds, and control leads for both the rotors and the drive arms.

    One other accessory you may want to look into is the lnb feed horn adapter to allow you to run your DirecTV receiver off your big dish. http://www.skyvision.com/store/mi5034007.html [skyvision.com]

    I do have one, and so long as you are only looking at the one sat location, everything seems to look great. Theoretically you will get better reception, though this will depend upon how good you are at mounting everything.

    ~Rusty

  • go here. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    www.al7bar.tk is the fite for all FTA discussions.
    i use a digiwave 6800 myself.

  • A barrel of fun - do it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by general_boy ( 635045 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @10:56AM (#12392343)
    I took the plunge into DVB FTA about 6 months ago, and have enjoyed almost every minute of it. $300 is indeed reasonable, but for another $100 you can get combinations of a bigger dish, better motor and/or better LNBF(s).

    My comments below refer to Ku band only. Perhaps 65-70% of the FTA channels on Ku-band. I see most expansion occurring there too. C-band is certainly not dead but also does not seem to be growing like Ku.

    PROS:
    . A truly eclectic mix of full-time channels available. Maybe 200 TV and 300 radio (audio only) are in my receiver's memory. Yes, are many as 1/2 are foreign language - mainly Chinese, Spanish, Arabic. A few of those have additional English audio channels.
    . No subscription fees. Spend you $300 or $400 and enjoy.
    . If you like news, monitor the direct feeds from the news truck. Transient in nature but are plentiful and especially easy to find during major events, e.g., new pope, volcano, weather, political. See what the reporters say when they think no one's watching. :-)
    . Incredible selection of music/audio channels.
    . The DiSH network satellites have most of their audio, and a few TV channels in the clear, e.g., NASA TV. There is also a pair of Canadian commercial satellites (Nimiq) with similar programming.
    . If you also get a computer card like a Twinhan 1022, on Linux you can easily record any channel's MPEG stream direct to HD, and burn that to a non-standard but playable DVD. You can do similar things on Windows with $$ software and not as much flexibility. Perfect recordings though, exactly as they came over the air.

    CONS:
    . Not for folks who gotta have their Discovery Channel, MTV or other commercial channels. More appeals to the "DXer" type personality, who appreciates unusual programming.
    . Getting a motorized Ku band setup aligned can be a challenge for the best installer. A perfectly plumb, stable mounting post is the first step.
    . No guarantees today's programming will still be there tomorrow. Then again, if it's not, chances are some new channel has popped up elsewhere.
    . You have to dig (search) for new programming; more hands-on than viewing channels on a commercial service.

    Advice:
    . Get at least a 90cm dish, 1m is even better. Smaller (75-80cm) can work but you will miss some weaker channels and lose more signals during rain.
    . Get a motor and be prepared to spend a couple hours aligning it. There's no other way to cost effectively see the 20 or so satellites carrying FTA programming. Get help if available.
    . Be sure your receiver has 'blind search' capability, e.g., Fortec Lifetime Ultra.
    . If you get a 90cm+ dish, a cheap LNBF is fine. An expensive LNBF helps only with fringe signals or on smaller-than-they-should-be dishes.
    . If you get a new combo circular/linear LNBF or use two or more LNBFs, put a 2 or 4 way DiSEqC switch out at the dish and let the receiver electronically select between them.

    I have two LNBFs mounted on a 90cm motorized dish - an Invacom linear in the middle, and an original DiSH circular on a small bracket to the side. Works beautifully because the circularly polarized satellites are so strong. When receiving a circularly polarized satellite, I just program the motor to move +5 degrees of the true satellite position.

    Some sources I've used:
    http://adventistsat.com/ [adventistsat.com] - equipment
    http://sadoun.com/ [sadoun.com] - equipment and user forums
    http://lyngsat.com/ [lyngsat.com] - for programming. Not always 100% correct but usually current. I am also a contributor.

    The guy who runs Adventistsat is courteous, really knows his stuff and posts on a lot of DVB/sat boards.

    • Good post. I had all but forgotten that there was a time where I didn't have to pay to watch TV. It actually came through the air for free!

      Anyway, my question is: will any of this change once Congress makes up its mind [slashdot.org] about when to make the switch to all-digital broadcasts? What will happen to this "free" type of broadcast... will it just go away?

      • US VHF/UHF digital over the air TV and digital satellite TV are two different animals.

        Satellite digital TV is more mature and less fragmented than terrestrial and cable digital TV standards. The bulk of digital satellite video streams are DVB carrying SD MPEG-2 video content. Both DiSH (encrypted DVB) and DirecTV (encrypted Digicipher II) have announced plans to deploy MPEG-4 soon, as a means to offer HD-resolution video while keeping up their channel counts per transponder.

        However, video formats aren't

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