Free To Air Satellite

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maestro_za

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Hi all

http://www.sats-r-us.co.za/fta.html#

This sounds like a good alternative to subscribing to DSTV, seeing as it's a once off payment for equipment and installation and no monthly fee.

Anyone on the forum have a FTA system? What are the pro's and con's?

I've done a bit of research on overseas FTA, and it looks like there are many satisfied viewers in Europe and North America.

Your thoughts ...
 
Looks interesting, had a quick scan through the website - can you get any HD channels?
 
Here in the UK you get HD channels and recently some tvs have been released with built-in satellite receivers (think the panasonic brand Lcds have it) so all you need to do is the dish.

http://www.freesat.co.uk/
 
National Geographic and History Channel in HD? That's probably in the top 10 must have HD channels. Can one of these satelites pick up multiple 'feeds' at the same time or would it require fine tuning and fiddling around?

Could be a great alternative to DSTV if you can manually tune several channels from different feeds into your own channel preset -

e.g.
Channel 1 - National Geographic HD from X feed,
Channel 2 - Sky Movies from Y feed,
Channel 3 - MTV from Z feed,
etc

What about reliability? From what I read it seems that signals may come and go?

Edit: Woops, I found this after a bit more reading:

"In addition to standard free to air receivers, we can link these unit's to a number of satellites simultaniously! Yes you can receive feeds from multiple satellites on all these decoders."
 
Last edited:
maestro_za said:
I'd think so.

The thing is you need a Ku-Band and C-Band dish to watch all the feeds. I'm going to juggle my finances before getting all the equipment :D

If your dish is motorised, even better ;)
Click to expand...

One caution tho...dvb-s cards can't drive a motor,they don't have enough power.
 
maestro_za said:
I'm aware of this yes. It's much more technical than run-of-mill DSTV :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you're trying to say...

What i meant was.
The card in question is specs says:Supports DiSEqC 1.2 - Which means it is suppose to drive a motor.

Many installers don't even know it,but you can motorise a dstv ku dish with a diseqc motor.Now this motor draw its power from the single lnb coax.What these people don't tell you is a motor needs a current draw of around 500mA to move.The sat cards normally don't have that much.I know many people that bought sat cards in the past and later decided to add a diseqc motor,only to find out,it don't work.Some cards can drive a motor,just make sure about the current.

If you explore fta,a motorised dish,ku or c, is your only option otherwise there is not much to explore.
 
What I meant was, a DSTV ku band dish just points to the PAS7/10 satellite and that's it.

FTA is dependant on the motorised dish so that you can point to the different co-ordinates needed to "catch" the different feeds.
 
maestro_za said:
And your point is what exactly?

I can connect to the sats-r-us.co.za page just fine.

IAP, you need to learn to chill dude ... seriously
Click to expand...

Thats the exact message on the screen display. Large and in red, exactly as you see it in my post. Why must I chill FFS!. Why are you guys always patronizing me FFS?

Can it be because I am capped?

PS. I can now connect to sats-r-us.co.za. Maybe it was some hickup? Who knows!
 
I am Penguin said:
Thats the exact message on the screen display. Large and in red, exactly as you see it in my post. Why must I chill FFS!. Why are you guys always patronizing me FFS?

Can it be because I am capped?

PS. I can now connect to sats-r-us.co.za. Maybe it was some hickup? Who knows!
Click to expand...

Good observation. Perhaps you did have a hiccup.

Patronizing is your habit by the looks of things ;)
 
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