Talk:Free-to-air
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I thought 'free-to-air' meant something like 'free-to-rebroadcast' What is the origin of this term, and what does 'air' mean? Morwen - Talk 15:10, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
- Early 1990's satellite television jargon, now mainstream, and being made more so by the new Freesat announcement in the UK today. "Air" refers to the tranmission method - unencrypted radio waves, be they UHF, DTT UHF or EHF satellite. --Kiand 15:13, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
This article is in drastic need of improvement BTW 220.253.15.7 12:29, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Free TV
HOw can they give TV for free??? Why doesnt everyone do it then?? Realg187 18:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Basically the vast majority of the programming is the following: foreign, religious, encrypted (no you cannot get HBO etc from it), or non profit/public.
That being said however if you combined a ku based system with a c band with some over the air HD you could probably get over 100 or so channels free.
FTA though is a hobby. The channels are under no legal obligation to provide service. To note there's also wild feeds that basically could be anything, it's uncensored live shots. Also is that programming would be on multiple satellites (it isn't fixed like direct tv or dish network) so you'd need either multiple dishes or a motorized dish.
I highly recommand seeing lyngsat.com as that sort of keeps track of things (but not feeds...when people post feeds they usually stop!) Anything in the red is for a cband, anything in the green is a ku. Yellow shows both...there's also the "footprint" which means what part of the world can get it. If the frequency is four digits it's a cband, if five it's a ku. To get a picture of what it sort of is like see http://www.lyngsat.com/ia5.html That satellite has tons of free channels but it's mostly from the middle east and in arabic. But this one here http://www.lyngsat.com/g10r.html has a number in English but mostly of local affliates of major networks.
How come there is no mention of the north american FTA receivers that are programmed to illigally receive Dish Network and Bell programing for free ? Adisor19 17:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC) Adi
Probably because that is an illegal subsect of the FTA culture. Most people who use FTA do it as a hobby. I often search for new sattelite feeds, to see what they are. Quite often the free ones are "shared feeds", and you will see things like live news remotes. At one time, a lot of syndicated shows (Jeopardy and Star Trek: TNG) were distributed in this way. But with the advent of DirecTV and DishNetwork, and scrambled channels, FTA has largely died off. There is the group that uses it as a way to "steal" signals, but it is rather complex, and not something that most laymen can do. Not to mention that at any time a new security algorythm could come out and make all of your hardware worthless. Mushrom 23:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
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- It depends on what sattelite you are getting the feed from. Most people nowadays buy the programmable FTA boxes, which can be programmed to steal Dish Network feeds. This is illegal, but they do get all Dish signals (for as long as the security algorythms are able to be hacked). But people with "Big Dish" systems normally use them to get free legal transmissions. There are hundreds of sattelites you can use FTA with, not just the Dish ones. And even Dish has some feeds that are unscrambled, and are available for anybody to watch legally. Mushrom 16:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
How can an article on FTA television centre on satellite telelvision with no mention of analogue terrestrial broadcasts? Moswt European countries are FTA terrestrial after all!
[edit] The focus on satellite FTA in the North America section
The opening paragraph states, correctly:
Free-to-air (FTA) television (TV) and radio broadcasts are sent unencrypted and may be received via any suitable receiver.
Hence, ordinary terrestrial network television is FTA. Most sections of the article reflect this understanding. For instance, the Australian section includes the six terrestrial television networks as FTA, and the European section deals with the matter similarly.
Confusingly, the section on North America only deals with satellite FTA. If this article were written consistently, it would include ABC, NBC etc as FTA broadcasters. Ordinary Person (talk) 08:17, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
