Do you also get movies?

This makes me wonder why we can't get free satellite phone service too.
The paid cable service we use here on Long Island is horrible, I can't believe the crap they broadcast these days.

I like this idea - if I was in more long term living arrangements I might consider getting a set up like this one (I'm gonna assume the feeds can be received in the UK right?)... But I'm still in that strange point in life where I might up root with very little notice just for a laugh!

One thing that does occur to me is that these feeds are unencrypted now - but what if people viewing them becomes more and more 'main stream' and/or there is a high profile leak from a camera accidentally left shooting say the president as he gets Tony Blair out of his cage to feed him

It could really only take one incident to be a massive youtube hit and then all your kit is pretty worthless unless your willing to get around some legal ins and outs - does that make sense? They might see this as a technical vulnerability that could (presumably) be closed easily by just adding the encryption.

Great idea though, I love the idea of a motorised dish on the roof making strange movements at strange times - I'd have a black one, scifi it up a little and get one of those really powerful hand held lasers to occasionally fire a beam into the night sky - just to confuse the neighbours

Originally posted by Electro38
This makes me wonder why we can't get free satellite phone service too.

Well I'd say receiving telly from the satellites is a passive activity - you don't have a 2 way connection - it's like having an FM radio receiver but with a satellite instead of a tower - so long as you have a radio you can listen to the music - it don't matter if there is only one radio receiving or a million.

But phonecalls require 2 way capability - the satellite has to have the capacity to process each and every call - and that's not cheep or easy.

it is extremely rare i give a star and flag here on ats

but damn you sure earned them

this has to be one of the more important threads here on ats, im sure this is something almost every ats member would want, and i am sure many who see this will end up installing in their homes

great information

This is very interesting stuff.

I wonder what else is free out there that most people don't know about, but just needs the right equipment to use?

Oh Yeah! I'm so down with this!

I gave up "pay" tv at the beginning of the year and and now simply use free off the air programming. The signals are in HD, and the pictures are great. And I'm no longer paying some dick company a hundred bucks a month for 150 channels of crap and 3 that I like. We also supplemented with a basic netflix account and a ROKU box which streams certain netflix content to the television. Saving BIG bucks on tv entertainment this way.

This is right up my alley, thanks so much for posting!

I think most satellites travel along the equator. I could be wrong about that, because I know there's some that don't because the Antarctic research labs have satellite communications also. I think the "southern sky" stuff was written primarily for a U.S./European customer base.

I spoke o my wife about doing this, we're going to get this going soon. Thank you OP for reminding us about this.

I do remember in the late 80's a lot of people were buying dishes and receivers for this purpose. But I was in college then and wasn't interested in TV at all.

Strangely, in the 90's I stopped hearing of people buying dishes, and I assumed that you couldn't receive signals for free anymore!

But now we pay for pure garbage, I cannot believe we are paying for this stuff and bombarded with commercials. We pay for the service and commercials too?

I remember when cable TV was commercial free, I think it was worth the cost back then (EARLY 80'S), but not now.

Originally posted by tjack
Oh Yeah! I'm so down with this!

I gave up "pay" tv at the beginning of the year and and now simply use free off the air programming. The signals are in HD, and the pictures are great. And I'm no longer paying some dick company a hundred bucks a month for 150 channels of crap and 3 that I like. We also supplemented with a basic netflix account and a ROKU box which streams certain netflix content to the television. Saving BIG bucks on tv entertainment this way.

This is right up my alley, thanks so much for posting!

What equipment are you using; receiver, dish, etc. What's your setup?

Thanks.

Great Post

Many moons ago my father and I owned a business installing Satellite entertainment systems. Man did we ever make some money. We did installs for people like Dr. Denton Cooley (nice guy by the way). To my point. Satellite Entertainment Xperts (spelled correctly) was doing swimmingly until the major movie channels started scrambling their signals. And that was that. We gave some of our best customers "black boxes" to cut the scramble and that was all she wrote.

If the scrambling had never occured this way of recieving information from all of the world would have been readily available today. TPTB would have had to control the media of the entire world to stop the dissemination of information. But in a sense they did, didn't they? After all who owns these channels.

I mean there were two basic things our customers were looking for Movies and the Playboy channel. After they scrambled no one wanted to pay $3000 for a 14' to 16' sometimes 20' dish that picked up news feeds. Bet they wish they had now. Besides it was always fun to catch a newscater picking his nose.

[edit on 13-9-2009 by WWJFKD]

Great thread and lots of good information here I want to get a fta satellite setup going. Does anyone know if I can utilize an old direct tv dish for the dish? maybe change the lnb's or something?


This thread made me think of this great doucumentary called Spin. The film maker used all this raw footage from the satellite feeds to show political elections in the early 90s and some other stuff. It's very interesting and exactly what this thread is all about. You can see it on google video to get an idea of whats possible and some good footage

Google Video Link

[edit on 13-9-2009 by warpboost]