End of analog TV

Your dish reception should be ok though. Satellites were invented a while back, why is anyone still using terrestrial communications?

Per Peter Hucker:

communications?

To save $20+ per month.

Well, you are apparently, as you said that your Freeview signals were ok, didn't you ?

Arfa

communications?

They are the same price!!! (Free)

I bought a 2nd hand freeview box when I was considering stopping Sky. However when I phoned to cancel (after checking the signal and what channels I could get), they gave me half price, so I stayed.

Per Peter Hucker:

That one went right over my head.

How does one get TV via satellite for free in the USA?

Ah. So no matter how good the Freeview signals that you receive are, and no matter how good the government sponsored advertising blurb about DTTV is, you still prefer to shell out for a (reduced price) subscription service, to Sky. I wonder what that tells us ? Perhaps that you would miss the channels and superior satellite performance, that you are never going to get from Freeview DTTV ? At least if you finally do give up on Sky, you will be able to receive the FreeSat bird on the same dish without even moving it ... :-)

Arfa

If he is in the UK, doesn't he already pay for Freeview? Here in Israel we also have a TV tax, and I pay around 6 quid a month for the privledge of owning a TV set that can receive Channel 1. That also includes anyone with cable or DBS TV, but they have not really gone out of their way to track them down.

So it's not really Freeview, or Freesat, it's just cheaper. :-)

Geoff.

In the UK, we have a 'television licence'. A few years back, it was re-branded a 'Broadcast Receiving Licence' presumably to make it a catch-all device for all forms of content reception. The revenue from this license is used as the primary funding for the BBC. The independant channels finance themselves from advertising revenue. However, even if you don't watch the BBC programming, you are still liable for a 'TV Licence' if you use a TV to watch any kind of live broadcast. Recording and watching later, also counts. I'm not sure what the strict letter of the law is, regarding watching via 'net streaming and archiving, which is becoming a common form of content delivery now. For instance, you can watch many of the BBC's offerings via the web, and listen to their radio programming live or archived. Channel 4 has a free service called "4OD", which does the same.

The licence has undergone a few quiet changes over the years. For instance, it used to be issued to a household, and children who were away at university, living in digs, still qualified as being part of the household, as their primary domicile was still the family home, but that has now been changed such that the licence is issued to an address, so students have to have their own licence for their digs, or risk a £1000 fine, as the TV advert gleefully informs us ...

So, even though the basic analogue service is fundamentally 'free', it is, as you say, 'taxed' by way of a licence fee, set, administered and levied by the government, and passed on to part-finance the BBC.

Freeview is the replacement terrestrial digital service for the basic 5 channel analogue service that is being phased out. It uses digital multiplexes shoe-horned into part of the existing analogue band, and carries a lot more channels than the analogue service, as well as some radio content. Some of the additional programming is 'quality' material from the BBC and ITV services, but much of the rest is low grade crap of the shopping channel variety.

The current main satellite provider is Sky. They are an independant company owned by Murdoch, and as well as carrying their own programming and premier movie and sports channels, they also carry the full raft of terrestrial programming. This public and independant content, can be viewed without charge, after an initial small fee for a 'free to air' viewing card. However, it's not the very easiest of things to organise, and most people tend to finish up taking some form of subscription package to get at least Sky One, which is a channel worth having, along with the Discovery and History suites etc. A 'basic' Sky subscription is not hugely expensive - as long as you keep it basic. There are something like 30 mix 'n' match options available, and it's very easy to get carried away with premium channels such as movies and sports, and then the subscription does start getting out of hand. By ditching the movies and multi-room options, and by having no sports channels, I got mine down to around a tenner a month.

The latest over-air programme delivery service to be offered, is FreeSat. This is operated by the BBC and ITV, I believe, and is basically a 'mirror' of the terrestrial digital service, but delivered via satellite. The bird for this service, is in the same constellation as the Astra satellite suite which carries the Sky content. So an existing Sky dish will work without repositioning. It is a truly free service like Freeview, but subject to the same licence requirement. The major difference is that unlike the Freeview service, which is being crippled by bandwidth and band allocation restrictions, the FreeSat service has oodles of bandwidth available to it, so can easily carry many many full bitrate channels with full interactive services, as well as virtually limitless HD content in the existing and well proven mpeg-2 format.

Given the obvious advantages of the satellite service over the corresponding terrestrial one, and the similar hardware and installation costs (ref the sub-fifty quid ready-to-roll FreeSat system that Screwfix are offering), I really can't see why anyone upgrading from analogue to digital, would want to go down the terrestrial route ...

Arfa

Sorry, I was under the impression that if you could get it in rip off UK, you could get it anywhere.

If you subscribe to a satellite service, and don't pay up, do you not still get the free channels? If I stop paying my Sky Digital subscription, I still get the free channels through the dish (the ones I'd get through an aerial either on digital or analog).

could get it anywhere.

get the free channels? If I stop paying my Sky Digital subscription, I still get the free channels through the dish (the ones I'd get through an aerial either on digital or analog).

Not in the US. If you don't pay sat or cable then your TV blitzes off unless you have an aerial. There is no such thing like your Astra satellites here. Although, last time I was in Europe the programming on there did not exactly impress me.

could get it anywhere.

get the free channels? If I stop paying my Sky Digital subscription, I still get the free channels through the dish (the ones I'd get through an aerial either on digital or analog).

I take it you can't get our satellites from that far away? Or anyone else's?

I was under the impression (only from word of mouth and what I've seen on American sitcoms/etc) that your TV was as full of junk as ours. You lot invented the term "channel flipping" didn't you?

you could get it anywhere.

get the free channels? If I stop paying my Sky Digital subscription, I still get the free channels through the dish (the ones I'd get through an aerial either on digital or analog).

Yeah, some remote ones but you need big honking dishes.

American sitcoms/etc) that your TV was as full of junk as ours. You lot invented the term "channel flipping" didn't you?

I never watch sitcoms. The main issue I see is that programming guides are wrong a lot. Announced movies are replaced by something else willy-nilly style and even the "new and improved" DTV with its online menues still shows the old movie while (!) the wrong one is playing. Pathetic. However, nature channels, PBS and stuff are really great. Also the evening news which in Germany were just a brief 15 minutes when I lived there. Here it's 45-60 minutes (minus commercial time).

IMHO one has to avoid centering family life around the TV set. It's not good to do that, never has been.

No, from the U.S. the UK satellites are below the eastern horizon. They also use a "spot beam" and although I can "see" the satelites, there is no signal here.

I once tried using a program which calculates the dish size you need to receive a signal and found that even with a 9 meter dish, there was not enough signal here. Not that I was going to install a 9 meter dish, but it was worth the cost of putting a number into a free program. :-)

And BTW, in the U.S. they use a 60Hz signal with a different color encoding scheme, and most TV's won't display the signal. Digital encoding is similar, but US digital TV still ends up with 30 frames per second (actually slightly less due to a rounding error), while the UK uses 25.

Geoff.

Per Joerg:

Somewhere - a number of years ago - I recall reading about people who made their own earth-station type dishes and were pulling signals directly from the comm sats.

Has that little hole been plugged by now?

Per Peter Hucker:

American sitcoms/etc) that your TV was as full of junk as ours. You lot invented the term "channel flipping" didn't you?

I guess it's a matter of individual preference, but I don't see much that really grabs me.

Mainly I tape stuff: Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley on weeknites, Nova whenever it happens, Bill Moyers' Journal, Now, and a few others.

We flip between Charlie Gibbs and The News Hour during dinner.

When I go down to my daughter's place where they have cable or when I'm taking care of the neighbor's cat where he has a dish, sometimes I find interesting stuff - like Comedy Central or CSPAN... but often it just takes that much more channel surfing to find out there's nothing interesting on.

At one time C band satellite dishes were quite common. In those days they were not used for direct boradcast, but "feeds". For example, you could watch a network feed which would was destined to be picked up by your local network affilate or cable company, and rebroadcasted.

Around 1985, HBO (US network Home Box Office) purchased MPEG encoding equipment which included DES (US digital encryption standard) encryption. They intended it to only be used by their licensees who would redistributed their programing material.

Another vendor, Select-TV, offered their boxes to home users.

Due to the DES chips, the boxes could not be exported from the U.S., although some were smuggled into Canada.

Now, except for the US, you are legally permitted to receive any signals which are "free to the air", meaning they are either analog unecrypted, (which I'm not even sure ever existed on satellites) or digtally encoded (but not encrypted).

In the US, the law requires you to pay for signals that can be paid for. For example, if someone offers a package that includes a signal that is FTA, you have to pay them (or someone else) for it. There are are few true FTA signals still out there, such as PBS (tax payer supported TV).

Outside of the US, there are many FTA channels, but most of them are not worth watching unless you are a native of the country that uplinks them. The UK is an exception, but due to the spot beam of the satellites, the signals can not be received outside of the UK (maybe Northwestern France and the Irish Republic).

Here Israel channels 1 and commerical channels 2 and 10 are available FTA. Channels 1 and 2 are also available over analog UHF.

There is a DBS service called YES which used NDS (news datacom) encryption, but is not part of the "Newscorp" empire.

You can also buy an FTA dish, but to an English speaker the programing is sparse. What bothers me is there is a company that sells a digital decoder/receiver that instead of using standard decoding cards which are not sold here, it downloads the decryption keys over the Internet.

In plain English it's pirated. Up until a year or so the importer of the receivers gave away the codes to sell receivers, now he's figured out he can charge almost the same price as a basic package from YES (they are

It's presented as a way to get around the high price of pay tv, I wonder how many people would have bought them if they were told the truth?

Geoff.

Arfa Daily wrote: (snip)

No line-of-sight to satellite?