What this site is About?

This site is form by a group of People that
like to test and research FTA and find channels available without
subscription but is digitally encoded and may be restricted geographically.
Neither of these is pay-TV, which is an encrypted subscription (or pay-per-view)
service.

What is Free-To-Air(FTA)?

Sonicview, Coolsat, Viewsat, Digiwave, Pansat, Neosat, NFusion, ProSat, and the
list goes on and on! Where did all of these receivers come from? While the U.S.
and Canadian Cable industry distributes their programming largely via products
sold by Motorola and a few others, the rest of the world chose the MPEG-2
format. Granted, even though, the Motorola Digicipher II has some MPEG-2
attributes, it nevertheless remains a totally proprietary platform. Who has
chosen MPEG-2 as a platform? Dish Network, Scientific Atlanta, and the rest of
the world have. Even DirecTV is a early version of MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is a digital
platform that allows several digital broadcasts to be compressed onto one
frequency or channel. Without MPEG-2, Digicipher, or other compression platform,
it would not be possible to have direct broadcast television services like
DirecTV or Dish Network. Equally important is the way the programmers get the
their product to their retail outlets such as DBS and cable. They too have
chosen compressed digital transmissions largely due to cost. PAX on GE-1 is an
example of this.



What does MPEG2-FTA mean?

MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group. It is a method for compressing
data. FTA stands for "Free to Air"- meaning that the signal is not encrypted
with conditional access. . Smart Cards or Conditional Access Modules, are
generally used to decode scrambled signals.



MPEG-2 is not an encryption method although encryption can be added. Dish
Network uses the Nagra system of encryption, DirecTV uses a News Data system,
and full view big dish primarily uses the Digicipher system. Transponder time
has become so expensive that with the exception of the preachers, the porno
channels, and the home shopping networks, it doesn't make sense to place only
one channel on one frequency. With HBO, and Discovery Networks planning 25
channels each, it would take over two C-Band birds to air their material the old
fashioned analog way.



What can be seen on Free to Air?

FTA or "Free To Air" simply means that the signal is not encrypted. Most cable
type programming is encrypted. Occasionally programmers may turn the scrambler
machine off and you can see a channel or two with an MPEG-2fta receiver. You
will never see Time Warner cable programming, i.e. CNN, HBO in fta mode in the
U.S.. CNN, and other international news channels, are available to viewers
around the world in free to air mode, but not to the U.S..



In the U.S. there are a number of channels that are available via MPEG-2 FTA
receivers that have indicated that they plan to remain in the clear or are
believed to intending to stay clear. These include Saudi TV, Abu Dhabi, Thai TV,
Kuwait TV, Syria TV, Taiwan, Iran, and as we go to press, Bloomberg TV all on
Telstar 5, ku, which can be received on a .7 meter dish. The list changes now
and then but these and more can be seen today.



GE-1 is the home of a bouquet of channels from Paxton Communication's PAX TV.
PanAmSat 9 at 58 degrees west is home to the RTP, EWTN, CCTV China, NHK, Deutche
Wella, an Arab bouquet in PAL, and a channel from Colombia. Some of the channels
from the middle east have scrambled but their feeds to Australia remain in the
clear. These feeds use the PAL format but a receiver like the BEC will convert
the picture to NTSC, the North American format. MPEG2 FTA feeds are numerous and
more and more are being added every day. The economics of compression, allowing
more than one service on each frequency dictate that we will see more. Every
time another satellite fails, and they are failing, we see the prices of
transponder time go up. A couple of thousand dollars an hour for a better bird
are not unusual for part time use.