AMC 21 is a true fta option
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Yessir, it is. It's all PBS feeds. If you're a PBS junkie (like me) it's a must. It has the national PBS west and east feeds that are rebroadcasted by your local PBS station.
Note that those national feeds are in HD... There are also various SD PBS feeds on AMC-21, such as PBS World and Create.
For me the PBS HD/SD channels are really invaluable.
I am spending about 75% of my TV time watching PBS HD feeds or PBS World, Create and Montana.
It would be fantastic if as SatelliteGuys community we can somehow show special appreciation to the PBS station and let them know how popular they are in the true FTA world.
I am personally considering PBS financial support. At this moment I am receiving all of the PBS channels exclusively using FTA.
With my recent KU setup (1meter dish) I can receive all FTA stations listed in THE LIST and more. I can scan southern arc from 58 to 129.
Most of the time my dish is parked at AMC21 and I am considering to dedicate one big static dish to this destination.
I am spending about 75% of my TV time watching PBS HD feeds or PBS World, Create and Montana.
It would be fantastic if as SatelliteGuys community we can somehow show special appreciation to the PBS station and let them know how popular they are in the true FTA world.
I am personally considering PBS financial support. At this moment I am receiving all of the PBS channels exclusively using FTA.
With my recent KU setup (1meter dish) I can receive all FTA stations listed in THE LIST and more. I can scan southern arc from 58 to 129.
Most of the time my dish is parked at AMC21 and I am considering to dedicate one big static dish to this destination.
I noticed you are in S. Ontario, perhaps closer to Buffalo or Detroit but it was suggested awhile back to donate to your "local" PBS station. You could select one that is closest to you and donate to it. But please do not mention you watch FTA. Somebody, somewhere with a weird way of thinking will not like it and start trying to get them encrypted (not likely in these times but you never know).
Red Green show rocks!! Duct tapealso Montana PBS which has the Red Green show
'Keep your stick on the ice!'
Ken Burns is going to have a national park special on soon. Can't wait to see it in HD!
The question in my mind is how goodwill of this sort fits into PBS / CPB's business model.
For a Canadian who has an interest in pledging, I suppose that might not be a big problem, necessarily.
But for someone like me who is an a local PBS market, it wouldn't surprise me if the local "public" TV station might take a very critical view about competing with national feeds or the affiliate in another market.
By the way, I'd like to show special appreciation to see CBC programming, but I can't find any... Anyone have some tips there, or is this government funded channel only viewable for a fee?
Absolutely. The local affiliates don't want us watching satellite, and PBS has made it clear that they don't want us watching satellite. They have in the past reluctantly provided one satellite channel (PBS-X) that they deemed as OK for us to watch, and in the past, they even had a way that sat viewers could send in donations, and they had the PBS-X schedule on their web page. But that ended. They have made it clear that they considered all the SCPC stuff to be off limits, claiming that it was private business communications. I have NO idea of what their business plan is now, but I'm guessing that they are OK with us watching the 12140 HD channels, and the analog channel (if that's still there), but not OK with any of the other channels, but that's just a guess on my part. It is 99.99% certain, however that they are NOT happy with us watching many of those channels on AMC21, and contacting them to thank them for putting those channels up for us to watch would be a bad idea, because it could cause them to encrypt. I have already seen some encryption on the NET MUX on G28, and people have commented on them password protecting their web page.
I think at this point, the only reason they aren't encrypting is that their long term plans are with the IP delivery system, and they don't think it's worth the cost to encrypt what they see as a temporary system.
This whole thing about PBS protecting their signal really annoys me, mainly because of all the tax dollars that go to PBS and all the related businesses that they have split up into to hide the fact that they are in fact a business rather than a non-profit service. They basically have a portion of the business that pretends to be non-profit, but uses tax dollars to buy programming from the separate for-profit entities. That and the commercials between programs on what's supposed to be a commercial free network, and the extremely annoying pledge drives where they take off your favorite programs and put on some dumb program that they think will keep you watching long enough to be shamed into donating. Years ago, I decided that if they ever had a pledge drive around my favorite show, that I would donate (again), however about 15 years have passed, and every time they have a pledge drive, they take off my favorite show during the drive.
Anyway, I watch a LOT of PBS, but I am more and more annoyed by their "business plan" and their pretending not to be a business while taking our tax dollars. Half of me wants this to come to a head, and have them lose all their government funding unless they become truely non-profit and provide their signals free of charge to both affiliates and satellite viewers. But the other half of me wants to stay quiet, and not rock the boat, and watch what they allow us to watch while we can. Overall though, I see PBS as about as greedy as the NFL or DTV.
For the poster in S Ontario the PBS stations in NY target southern Ontario. When they do pledge drives on Buffalo, NY PBS they have a Buffalo number and a Toronto/Hamilton number. In fact, recently 2 PBS stations were gonna be dropped from cable in Canada (Buffalo PBS being one of them...the other two were Erie, PA and Watertown NY). According to news articles, the Erie PBS gets 200K in pledges from London, ON area viewers.
Articles on it (for anyone interested)
Rogers Cable
WPBS-TV Press Release - Rogers Cable
London Free Press - Local News- Loss of London viewers could sink Erie station
London Free Press - Local News- Rogers retains PBS affiliate WQLN
Articles on it (for anyone interested)
Rogers Cable
WPBS-TV Press Release - Rogers Cable
London Free Press - Local News- Loss of London viewers could sink Erie station
London Free Press - Local News- Rogers retains PBS affiliate WQLN
But I do know that Montana PBS has taken pledges from the FTA'ers and a few folks have mentioned it. But otherwise BJ you're right. PBS does want us to watch our "local" PBS but in some areas you may have 2 "competing" PBS stations.
Here in MN the PBS stations are all their separate entities. There are 5 different ones in MN. Its not a "state" PBS like some areas where they all run the same thing
Twin Cities PBS-covers Mpls/St Paul area
Lakeland PBS-covers Bemidji (northern MN) and Brainerd (Central MN)
Duluth PBS-covers Duluth/Superior and NE MN
Pioneer PBS-Covers West Central and SW MN
Austin PBS-Covers SE MN
On cable there are some areas that get 2 PBS stations. Twin Cities PBS is one of them and the "local" one is the other. By our cabin they get both TPT and Lakeland. Heck on both satellite providers they carry Twin Cities PBS and Lakeland PBS in the whole market. Lakeland PBS gained a huge amount of viewers by being added on sat (both are in the same DMA but neither really overlap. TPT is Mpls area and Lakeland is Northern area). SO those viewers get to choose which one to support which is interesting. I support Lakeland PBS for a few reasons
-they have some interesting shows that TPT doesnt have
-they have a newscast designed for that area. TPT has none. This is good when at the cabin as the weather cast is more designed for there unlike Mpls stations who (very quickly) give the temp for the cabin area
Here in MN the PBS stations are all their separate entities. There are 5 different ones in MN. Its not a "state" PBS like some areas where they all run the same thing
Twin Cities PBS-covers Mpls/St Paul area
Lakeland PBS-covers Bemidji (northern MN) and Brainerd (Central MN)
Duluth PBS-covers Duluth/Superior and NE MN
Pioneer PBS-Covers West Central and SW MN
Austin PBS-Covers SE MN
On cable there are some areas that get 2 PBS stations. Twin Cities PBS is one of them and the "local" one is the other. By our cabin they get both TPT and Lakeland. Heck on both satellite providers they carry Twin Cities PBS and Lakeland PBS in the whole market. Lakeland PBS gained a huge amount of viewers by being added on sat (both are in the same DMA but neither really overlap. TPT is Mpls area and Lakeland is Northern area). SO those viewers get to choose which one to support which is interesting. I support Lakeland PBS for a few reasons
-they have some interesting shows that TPT doesnt have
-they have a newscast designed for that area. TPT has none. This is good when at the cabin as the weather cast is more designed for there unlike Mpls stations who (very quickly) give the temp for the cabin area
I've caught a number of hours of that on HD04 (or maybe it was HD03) at around 5AM pacific time (before I go to bed!).
Oregon Public Broadcasting, despite receiving millions of taxpayers dollars to convert rural translators to digital, has done basically nothing, and their web page just says T.B.A. for the almost all of them. Since they've basically abandonded rural Oregon I've decided to share the wealth. This last year I was a member of Montana PBS, the next year I'm thinking of WGBH since I like a lot of their programs. In either case, I'm still supporting PBS.
I am the avid PBS FTA viewer from Southern Ontario.
Thanks for all the clarifications and advices.
This is one of the reasons why it is valuable to be a member of the SatelliteGuys.
PBS is the only station claiming to function based on public support and broadcasting many channels in the clear. I was convinced they do it intentionally.
Why o why we do not have any real FTA broadcasters.
Because of the crisis North American broadcasters lost most of the income. Now most of them are trying to reinvent they business model. If we can somehow steer them in the direction of the FTA it would be fantastic. Unfortunately it is very unrealistic.
Thanks for all the clarifications and advices.
This is one of the reasons why it is valuable to be a member of the SatelliteGuys.
PBS is the only station claiming to function based on public support and broadcasting many channels in the clear. I was convinced they do it intentionally.
Why o why we do not have any real FTA broadcasters.
Because of the crisis North American broadcasters lost most of the income. Now most of them are trying to reinvent they business model. If we can somehow steer them in the direction of the FTA it would be fantastic. Unfortunately it is very unrealistic.
PBS is OTA and FTA.
CBC is OTA only, AFAIK. Don't know about TVO.
Is that an example of even trade?
I wish I could get CBC on FTA
Me too.
Is is available in the gray market?
TVO is not available in the US. They are Ontario's version of PBS. Shows lots of PBS stuff like cartoons
CBC is available on cable in the "border" states. In MN only northern MN has CBC. In some places right on the border in ND & MN they can get CBC. CTV & Global on cable
I guess I should have made it clearer that I was talking about TV in border towns in general rather than FTA. I know Buffalo and Detroit PBS solicit Canadian pledges. TVO and CBC are even on many American border town cable systems. A few of the PBS kids shows are actually TVO/CBC productions
They should have CBC on FTA. It isn't but might be in the future. totally unrelated, the french CBC repeater down my road gets its french CBC feed from Expressvu. During a blizzard they broadcast the teal/gray signal warning box for 2 days
They should have CBC on FTA. It isn't but might be in the future. totally unrelated, the french CBC repeater down my road gets its french CBC feed from Expressvu. During a blizzard they broadcast the teal/gray signal warning box for 2 days
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