Satalite, Cable, Dish TV Oh My

[SavageAmusement]

I know there is Dish network and Cable, and there is WOW cable etc


But can someoen give me the details from perosnal experience, about the odl fashioned HuGE dish, Satalite situation.

I just came home for lunch and I was walking by my neighbors house nad he is having one dropped off, right now-
SO I asked him- a few questions and he was raving.
Something about 2000 channels- etc etc

Now long ago I looked into this, becuase as I recall you dont need monthly service?
but someone told me you need descramblers for various channels

The websites I am looking at are confusing-
anyone have the details on this- cuz my cable bill hit 124.00 this month without internet.

[lordsmurf]

Quickie answer: Buy DirecTV or DISH Network or digital cable.

Long, detailed answer:

A lot of people are easily confused by what satellites can and cannot do. If your neighbor bought a big dish thinking he'll get 2,000 free channels, he's in for a rude awakening.

Those are called "C-BAND" satellite dishes, using a 3-meter dish (about 10 feet across), and require a receiver for every tv. It is both analog and digital, mostly digital as people swap to Ku signals these days. It costs money each month, most channels are encrypted by unbreakable-to-date encryption (Digicipher II). You can get some "FTA" (free-to-air) channels, but it maybe be 150 at most, and only in certain conditions. Most of those free channels are crap, public access at a college, Korean news stations, Indian religious programming, etc. You can get a number of USA and Canada locals, as well as national feeds, like UPN and all.

The 18" dishes (or 21" oval) are "DVB" satellite (digital video broadcasting) and are sold by services like DirecTV, DISH Network, Bell Expressvue, SKYnet, and some others. Usually these services are monopolies or duopolies in the countries they serve. You require a receiver, and the the channels are encrypted. Currently, SKY and DirecTV are unbroken, each using an advanced NDS system. Until April 2004, DirecTV encryption could be hacked, though it was a real chore, very fluky, and barely worked, and even then, just for a few hours or days (maybe weeks or months if you got really lucky). DISH and Bellvue were on old Nagra encryption that could be hacked with computer setups or Blackbird FTA boxes. Sometime late last year, I believe they moved over to Nagra2, which is currently unbroken. In all likelihood, these may never be broken, so spending money or time on hacks is futile and wasteful. Not to mention highly illegal. Each of these services gives you about 200 channels for $50 a month, and you can grab up to 300 channels for around $100 per month or more. One receiver per tv required

Finally, you have FTA, the free (truly legally free) satellite. But as I said earlier, you get few channels of any value. You've also got to install either multiple dishes, or a very complex and expensive setup that can rotate around. It's generally a 36" or smaller dish. I looked into this a few years ago, and have looked back again a few more times, and decided the hassle and costs are so overwhelming ($500 or more, plus tons of hours) that I just assume pay a DVB for the sure thing for a year. Or use cable.

Receivers descramble paid channels, using CAM (conditional access modules). Some CAMs are hardwired into the box (most C-Band), some are cards you insert into the receiver (like DVB). Cards will probably go away more and more in the future, as they were largely responsible for the easy hackability of late 1990s and early 2000s DVB transmissions.

There are a huge amount of "get free tv" scams out there, people who will bilk you out of $500 or more, promising something that simply does not exist, or swindling you into buying something that quit working 5 years ago.

[Joker]

What you should have done with your neighbour is split the costs of Drect TV service.


and LS, it's "Bell Expressvue"

[battle7]

LS is right.

The big dishes use a number of satelites rather than just one. They have a ram that positions the dish for each satllite, each satellite hosts a number of channels thus the reason for repositioning. There are drawbacks to this, the ram needs greased in the grease fittings, motors that run the rams usually sieze up after continuous use. With the dish is constantly moving to line up with the different satellites, sunspots are usually a problem and there's nothing you can do about these, where one satellite may not have sunspots, others may and this changes over time due to the earths position at any given time.

Channel packages through the large dish systems are usually paid in 6 month or yearly payment plans, I don't know if this has recently changed but this was the norm when we had ours.

They are more expensive to replace when lightning hits them, "believe me, I've had first hand experience with this one"

The only real benefit from having a system like this are whats called 'fast feeds' where you might be able to watch a show a week in advance of everyone else being able to watch it, that is the only benefit, but the cost doesn't warrant this benefit.

[SavageAmusement]

Man massive bummer....

it sounded SO GOOD too..

I hate the cable bill.
HATE Hate Hate HATE