$crambled

[mastermesh]

I read in some other threads that sometimes there are $scrambled signals that are actually fta but show up as non-fta when you blind scan. Is that true, and if so, does anyone know which ones there are up there like that? I usually just blind scan with fta option only, but if it's worthwhile doing $scrambled+fta on some of the birds, I can try that.

Seems like it would be a pain to go in to channel edit and delete out hundreds of scrambled channels, and/or flip through hundreds of channels looking for a scrambled that's not really encrypted only to find that they are all encrypted.

I think once when I first started getting in to this I found one station, OLN I think, over on 110 or 119 that was fta, but is wasn't that way for long - about a day on and off of old reruns of survivor. Are there other oddball channels up there that stay unencrypted but still show up with a $?

 

[jh98]

Several of the religious channels on AMC 4 such as ATN and Hope Channel always scan as scrambled, but are always in the clear.

I'm not sure if anything on IA5 scans as scrambled but is normally in the clear, but several of the channels there are in the clear once in a while for a day or two.

 

[Mr Tony]

on AMC4 there are the church channels that for some reason do that.

Most satellites if something is free, there is no $ in the front of it. So you're OK with that.

Other than IA6, IA5 and a DBS satellite, I normally say "all" when I scan. The one advantage of the Coolsat is you can delete all scrambled channels at once

 

[mastermesh]

Can't remember which satellite it was, but I think it was one of the AMCs, some of the channels that show up as FTA are really scrambled... sometimes with unscrambled sound, other times not.

 

[Mr Tony]

AMC4 has those. The "HotelVision" has scrambled video but audio is in the clear

 

[Keith Brannen]

Guess it may depend on how many satellites you can scan. Having a fixed dish pointed at G10R and an LNB at IA7, I always scan FTA+scrambled. When I first found this site almost a month ago after getting my system, on one thread someone had suggested to check scrambled channels in case they were in the clear for a few hours or whatever. That advice has paid off.

So I always check whenever I smart scan (which seems to be almost every day, reminds me of my old OTA days when I would check for "atmospheric wild feeds"!)

 

[neil_kc1]

I remember Euro news on IA-5 scanned in as scrambled once but was free for a couple of days. Most of my luck finding free scanned channels is on amc-4 the religious broadcasters already mentioned.