Fta Satellite -first Time! anyone else have this hobbie?

[Watermonkey 0]

So I've decided to buy a new receiver from viewsat called the Viewsat PVR7000, a Fortec 90cm dish with motor and associated hardware. The entire package was ordered from gosatellite, motorized package 6. Now, once I get everything I ordered, I'll mount the dish, point it, and connect it and figure out how to program it. Sounds like a good time, eh? We'll be watching free satellite tv in no time and we'll be able to record, pause, rewind, and all that good stuff too with the 320GB Hard Drive that I opted for.


Am I the only one on the forum who's into free stuff like this? Anyone else run a FTA satellite in their house? Anyone want to? Talk to me!


(By the way, all of this is completely 100% legal.)

Update 6/21: So I finally had to admit to myself that I'm unable to point or aim this beast myself and I asked for some help from an acquaintance in town. I borrowed a compass and a signal meter that plugs inline at the dish. It's real sensitive but doesn't tell me which satellite I'm looking at. That's ok though. At least with these tools I succeeded in acquiring a satellite tonight, even it it wasn't the satellite I was looking for, and I was able to harvest over 400 channels with good clarity and I even watched part of a popular show, though I'm not going to mention which one. Tomorrow, I'll put that experience to good use and try and acquire more birds and hopefully soon I'll have the whole lot of them. At least now I know everything's working. That's a good start!

Update 7/1: So I've had the whole thing up and running with varying degrees of success for a week or more now and ended up buying the satfinder for $20. Now it seems to like the reference satellite a little too much so I've got to try a couple things in the software to try and shake it out of its stupor. I'll be doing that tonight and I'll post back to update the progress.

[hr=noshade] [/hr]
So it's been some time now since first buying the whole expensive FTA setup and I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear I'm still on the air and linked up to various satellites. Everything's smoothed out in the world of no cable or satellite bills and I really don't have any regrets. I encourage you to do your own research and draw your own conclusions. I'd also recommend a different receiver, though I won't stick my neck out and actually say which one, mainly because different receivers in different price ranges do different things and have different features. The one I bought is still pretty much doing its job, though I think, in hindsight, I should've bought a fixed antenna instead of the more expensive motorized one. Either way, though, it's more than paid for itself already. Next time I purchase one, I'll buy a HD capable receiver. Maybe by then I'll have that plasma or something like that that's HD ready...

Edited July 2, 2007 by Watermonkey (see edit history)

[Inhuman 0]

This sounds ****ing epic. In the end, how much did it all cost you?How is it through the bad weather?Does the sat ever fall?

[Watermonkey 0]

Yeah, I was shooting for the stars and all I could hit was a couple satellites. Better than empty space, though.Bad weather hasn't affected the reception once so far. More than I can say for the satellite internet we pay $70 per month for...The failures happen due to the providers changing their code. All you do then is download the new counter-measure from the appropriate internet forum, upload the file to the receiver, reboot off the new file, and you're back in business. Works quite well, really.

[sonesay 7]

So I can get my self free satellite TV with a setup like this? In New zealand we have a provider for extra channels but you have to pay monthly subscriptions once you get setup they give you a dish and decoder box. IMO it wasn't worth it as they replayed a lot of movies over and over and they did not cover all sports. Just looking at the images of the packages it looks like they come with a satellite dish and the decoder/receiver. I have 2 dishes on my roof already. Could I use the same dish and just buy the decoder/receiver box ?Being on different sides of the globe also how would I find out where to point it?

[~Upnorf Cr3w~ 0]

Now i used to fit all the sattelite dishes and equipment. the french is quite a good buy with a box called echo link. it gets you all the new movies and even adult channels. it is a box that may need updating but that is also free from the website provided when you buy the boxanother good one is the eutelsat 16 degrees. this is what the pubs have for all the football you get every main game and also get the 3o'clock games too. which is great if you dont want to spend over ?100 for a day at football. this sattelite can be installed into a house aswel as pubs.but then the hotbird 13 degrees is probably the best one for free stuff with most of the languages on there.and if you have the motorised even better. just get your self a box that you can put a cam card into then you can buy viewing cards for any sattelite and any channel and just swop them over when you please.

[Watermonkey 0]

Have a look around http://ww1.ftatalk.com/ and find out about Kiwi-land. I have no knowledge of that area of the world regarding satellites or anything else for that matter, except hobbits apparently like the area...

[hr=noshade] [/hr]
Someone asked me what I spent a while back and I don't think I answered. In total, I spent around $850 USD on everything. I could've gone higher, and if I went out to do it today, I would. Here's what I'd buy today, and the prices as listed currently on http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/:

Wave Frontier Toroidal T90 Satellite - $269
SonicView 360 Dual Tuner HD PVR - $589
SonicView A1 One Piece 8PSK Module - $199
shipping: $85

Total: $1142

Now realize these prices are higher due to the weakening of the dollar since I originally purchased the motorized antenna and the Viewsat 7000PVR back when I originally started this thread.

The antenna packs in ten or twelve LNBs so it's stationary, but capable of receiving signals off of many satellites at once. Nice to not have to worry about the motor. Also, it's 90cm which makes it nearly impossible to be affected by the weather.
The SonicView was my choice because it has dual tuners which I really like. It's nice to be able to watch one thing while you're recording another. Also, this unit is capable of storing said movies or programming on a hard drive, which would be extra. I don't know how large a drive you can get. My close second choice is the Captiveworks 3000HD which is basically a desktop computer with Linux installed at the factory. It's the same price, so, on another day, I'd probably go with that one. The slight advantage with the SonicView is that it's got quicker support for the Electronic Countermeasures (ECMs) the DN likes to send to you in their signal stream. Takes programmers some time to build a file that'll fix everything again. It also has a 4 Ghz AMD processor but I do believe you still have to buy an add-on 8psk module to make it totally HD compliant, I could be wrong about that though...
The 8PSK module is necessary for converting the signal to true 720p HD for SonicView and ViewSat receivers (along with all the others with the possible exception of the Captiveworks 3000HD as described above).

There may be better prices on the internet, but you've really got to research them to ensure they're legit. This is a grey market. Sometimes people buy this stuff to tie in to Free-To-Air programming, most of the time people buy this stuff to tie in to pay programming like DishNetwork and their brothers up in Canada. So with that criminal element comes some risk, easily countered with a little research starting with going to ftatalk.com and joining their forum and educating yourself. None of this is rocket science, it just takes some time and there is a learning curve, just like with anything else. Upfront costs are not that bad, if you ask me, considering when you gain.

[~Upnorf Cr3w~ 0]

Well im in the UK and i do the motorised sattelites which is most common round here for the adult packages and the football. i am surprised at the price you paid if it is free to air that you have. as we charge ?300 for a full motorised system which gets every sattelite in range.The box we use are called Technomate 1500ci. which is one of the best boxes round here especially as it moves the dish its self.Do you have any viewing cards with your set up or is it free to air? as if you dont have cards that is quite expensivedid you have to pay for it to be installed or did you also buy a sattelite finder to do it your self?I wouldnt mind knowing if you could get some viewing cards that we use over here and see what the price difference is. I will reply soon with a list of cards that we use and hopefully you could look for me

[Watermonkey 0]

So, you're saying for the equivalent of $584 USD you can get a motorized system in its entirety? Including the receiver? That's not bad. Two things to remember: First, I could do it for that price by scaling down the size of the antenna and going cheaper with the receiver by buying one without the PVR capability and dual tuners. Also, this is the U.S. and corporations are out to screw over every dumb American consumer they can here. The receiver has a card slot, but the idea for me is to not have to pay for any programming any more. That's not going to last forever, like when www2 is forced down our throats, the internet will be heavily and accurately monitored by corporate interests like the satellite providers here and they'll come a knockin if you've been downloading decryption files off the internet. Home of the slave, land of the cowards... And if I'd bought the right receiver, I wouldn't care if they did come a knockin cause with the motorized dish, there are probably about eight good satellites up there with enough free programming to keep me happy. It's completely different on your side of the globe, though. I couldn't comment on that at all. I bought the $20 sat finder and installed it myself successfully. There was a weeks worth of hassle, but it was worth it. I should've done a little more research, though...

[AbdurahmanL 0]

I've had fta for a few years now. First receiver I had was a Pansat 2500. I then upgraded to a Pansat 2700. Now, I Have a Pansat 3500SD and i've never been happier! I might upgrade to the Pansat 6000HXC PVR in the future, but for now I'm using the pansat 3500SD. Suffice to say, I'm a pansat fanboy With a 30 inch dish you can get lots of cool free channels! I especially go for the free arabic channels. There aren't that many english channels though. Mostly foreign language channels. But You can get Al Jazeera English! I recomend it to everyone! Amazing fta channel. I can't believe the cable and sattelite companies here in america refused to carry it! So many good documentaries and stuff. Quality Channel!I heard all about that other illegal stuff too, getting all the cable channels,although you couldn't pay me to get near that stuff. The feds might come knocking on my door

[Watermonkey 0]

True so true. So I take it you don't have the PVR right now? You need to get it... Really. I don't know how I'd live without it. Well, probably pretty much the same, but this way my life doesn't revolve around the TV schedule, and with dual tuners, you're not stuck watching something you'd just as soon watch later... You know... So, do you have the motorized antenna? The Pansat moves it well, does it? I'm really strongly considering that Captiveworks 3000HD receiver... Sweeeeeeet.... And, as long as you never ever say anything that might make someone from a certain company's law firm think you're pirating that companies content, joining ftatalk.com and downloading certain files won't get you in any trouble...I know what you're saying about al jazeera channel. I was watching that back when my receiver was moving the antenna. That's why I want a new receiver. There's so much unique content up there but I'm stuck on two mainstream satellites because this stupid receiver won't go with the program. It's almost like it was designed to be a pirate's receiver only... Very annoying.

[Watermonkey 0]

As an update, I finally decided to take down the 90cm antenna since I'm not able to use it with this receiver, and I put up another DN500 dual LNB antenna in its place. Easy install, it seems to be already tweeked (skewed) correctly, and I just downloaded the channels off of Echostar 5 and 9 satellites. Just one more to go to get the HD satellite that used to be VOOM! Of course this receiver will probably not like switching between birds and it'll be a pain, but now I've got that middle eastern and other alternative content I was looking for.

[AbdurahmanL 0]

Awesome. Nice Job! The thing with mine is that I don't have a motor, cause I heard that motors sometimes are unreliable. Sol I just have 3 dishes on the roof, one for each satellite. Since it's on a apartment building, it's practically invisible!Also I don't have the PVR, but I would really like it! I don't have HD, but that would really rock to get an HD receiver cause I have a 40" Sony Bravia HDTV

Edited May 30, 2008 by AbdurahmanL (see edit history)

[ihost 0]

Hello!Hmm, this sounds pretty interesting! I am using a Pansat 3500SD for a while now and I never had problems really but my old pansat (forgot which version it was) was really good too, but in the end, after a year and a half, it started to bug and not work properly anymore and nothing was able to show on TV.Well there are new ones you know, can burn dvds with it, can have a space disk to save your favourite shows while listening to another show on the hard drive and then burn into dvd and so on, but I figured out it not worth it, because there are many possibilities that it breaks and then, gotta buy a new one and which can cost a lot, so, personally, I stick with good old Pansats that have good features, but not the big luxe =D Tim.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

This seems like the card writers you can buy now...Like where you program your own card for PPV and whatnot.Wondering how legal these satellites are though, as they are technically stealing channels. To me it seems to be the same as going and downloading the alpha copy of Windows by hacking their server, as yes it's there but no it's not meant for you to go in and download.I could be wrong on that though(the satellite legality, not the Windows)