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.
