Technical > Cable & Satellite TV > What is FTA, is it legal?

What is FTA, is it legal?

To be honest, I never heard of this.

reply to netwire
Do a search for FTA in this forum - yes - there are free to air stations. Not all stations are free and hence - some is only available on pay and not on FTA.

reply to netwire
Free to air= Legal
Modified fta box = Illegal.

"if so what on earth would anyone pay for service that you could obtain free?"

They aren't directly paying for service but rather the box itself. However on some of these sats ( Telestar5 etc) they indeed do have a few channels that require money to watch.

reply to netwire
With further searching, and the information found here I have learned a good deal more about FTA systems. They seem kind of nice, and have a decent channel line-up, but of course it begs the question... is the price worth it. Anyhow, I'll look around a bit more and see if I can get some more info from ppl that own one.
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Dell Inspiron 6000 (x2)

reply to netwire
Most of the "cable" channels are going to be pay-only. So don't get illusions of being able to ditch the monthly cable or satellite tv costs in favor of a one-time FTA receiver cost.

There are a variety of FTA stations though that are free that you might be interested in. Also from time to time you might find an unencrypted uplink feed. This is the feed that a regional station provides to the national level. For instance you might get the source feed for a local university football or basketball game, or maybe the raw news footage that later gets cut up for a news segment on the nightly news.

There are also many foreign, religious, or educational feeds available as well. Here is a list of some of the US-based FTA signals that you may be able to pick up, depending on your equipment and location.
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Go Colts

reply to netwire
I'm an FTA hobbyist. It kind of takes me back to the days of Shortwave radio. You invest in a bunch of equipment, poke around in the sky, and see what you can find. It's a lot of FUN, and there is a lot of good programming up there, totally for free. Beware of buying that Viewsat STB from a non-authorized dealer, though, there are some "clones" of this line of boxes, that are fakes, and do not work correctly. There are many FTA STBs on the market through legitimate FTA equipment dealers. They're fairly sophisticated these days, with PVR and HD models available as well. "True" FTA is 100% legal, as legal as putting up an antenna and picking up FREE over the air TV stations. PM me, and I can give you some educational links if you're interested in looking into this hobby. I'll warn you, that it is not "cheap" to get into. You'll need a 30"+ dish, LNB, motor, cabling, switches, etc, as well as a GOOD quality STB. (Viewsat, Sonicview, Neosat are among the current high quality units.)

reply to AvrilYay

reply to netwire
I currently have a Traxis FTA receiver connected to 30" Ku dish pointed at SBS6 for OhioNews Network and a steerable 7.5' C/Ku dish that I use for FTA.
There are many FTA stations available from music videos to Live news/sport feeds,and ethnic programming.
I just was watching NASA TV. With my FTA receiver you can receive all 4 channels from NASA.
Getting into this hobby can get quite expensive. you can always start out with a single 30" or so Ku dish then add a
dish mover later and receive many more signals.
To get any C band stuff you will need a larger dish usually over 6 feet to get the FTA programming available there.
»www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
this link will give you a good idea what you can get with a FTA receiver.
Just look for DVB in the right hand side of that page.
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Embarq DSL 1500/586 | Voicestick | Skype

reply to netwire
Does anyone know if I can get DW-TV somehow with FTA?

reply to netwire
Thanks for letting me know, when I last received Dish Network they didnt have DW. I saw something on DW site where they state they are on NIMQ sat I think but then it says only in Germany>???
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Am Heimcomputer sitz' ich hier, und programmier' die Zukunft mir

reply to netwire
is this the same thing as the big ole C-Band dishs that people used to have(you know about 1-1.5m in diameter).
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports

Actually the old C-Band antennas were 2.4m to 3.5m in the old days, IE early/late 80's. Some of the newer stronger birds could be received with a 2m antenna as long as they were not closer that 2deg spacing between satellites.
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I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but what I'm not sure about is that what you heard isn't exactly what I meant.