HAVE ????'S ABOUT FTA BEING LEGAL

[jayelem]

I think we had two OTA pay-TV systems back in the 80's.
I'm sure we had one called ON.

Not sure what the other was... but I seem to remember it was on channel 22.
They may have had positive sync (but that doesn't sound right...).

What I do remember is they inverted the picture (black for white) for a few seconds, then un-inverted it for a while.
An engineer friend described a large board of electronics and switches he built to decode it.
A three-bit or four-bit number was transmitted on line 22 (?) and then looked up by the decoder to determine whether to invert or not invert this particular frame.

Perhaps it was called: Select TV...?
Wow, it's been so many years!
But, it's enjoyable to dredge up these memories. -

We had something like that in Chicago called Telefirst which ran on our Local ABC station late night and I think had to be recorded played back with some box.
Oh......................... found a link . TELEFIRST

 

[eurosport]

We had this when I was a kid...[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wometco_Home_Theater"]Wometco Home Theater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Whtsettopbox.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/44/Whtsettopbox.jpg/220px-Whtsettopbox.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/4/44/Whtsettopbox.jpg/220px-Whtsettopbox.jpg[/ame] ...'till Mom heard some of the language on those movies and told Dad "Get that thing outta here!" Me and my brother liked the "Uncle Floyd Show" that was on it in the afternoons!

 

[tvropro]

We had something like that in Chicago called Telefirst which ran on our Local ABC station late night and I think had to be recorded played back with some box.
Oh......................... found a link . TELEFIRST

I remember Telefirst they used the Sony system just like First Run did on F2 before it went VC2. If I remember the Sony system right it flashed positive to negative sync at different rates like a strobe.

 

[guapoharry]

Before there was cable TV in the city, there was a subscription terrestrial pay TV channel that showed HBO over microwave. Quite a cottage industry developed to make pirate receivers.

When I worked at Radio Shaft in the 80s some guy saw the manager about a special order of about 100 MRF-901 transistors. Later we came to find out some guy got fired from a local defense contractor for making PWBs for pirate receivers at work.

 

[Tron]

That sounds like Star TV, a terrestrial microwave channel we had in the New Orleans area in the early 80s. The service used a microwave rod antenna with a down-converter box which was mounted on the antenna mast. I actually still see some of these on rooftops in old neighborhoods where they've sat for almost 30 years.

 

[tvropro]

Showtime did that here using the MMDS frequencies at about 2.0 GHZ. They scrambled the video the same way they did on cable using the OAK Sinewave N-12 converter.

You could choose between 4 OTA subscription services in the 80's here. On MMDS Showtime, on UHF was ON TV, Sportsvision, and Spectrum.

 

[14karat]

In response to Skewed (or a comment on his post)
I feel that pain... I know there has to be groups of people sharing the info for the feeds.
I have found a few boards that have some feed info, but it's usually out of date and not of much help.
Think it would be great to have a private forum of some sort for discussing feeds... even if the threads were immediately deleted once completed it would still be great to be able to "divide and conquer" so to speak...

 

[tdti1]

In response to Skewed (or a comment on his post)
Think it would be great to have a private forum of some sort for discussing feeds...

Thing is people misuse these private sites, and take info and post it all over the net, or even on sites like Lyngsat and others to get some kind of respect but it's more like a back stabbing thing to do that has brought scrambling to many feeds.

If you have been hunting for a while you will know what birds and transponders to eye, and if you have a few close friends that you chat with on msn in private things can be found and kept on the dl.

 

[AcWxRadar]

I HAVE BEEN TOLD RECENTLY ABOUT FTA. I DO NOT QUITE UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE THEY WAY HE EXPLAINED IT "SEEMS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE". (THAT SCARES ME). THIS GUY TOLD ME THAT HE HOOKED UP AN FTA RECEIVER AND CAN NOW GET ALL PAY PER VIEW FIGHTS AND ALL NFL FOOTBALL GAMES "LEGALLY".

WHAT IS THE "REAL" CAPABILITY OF THIS SYTEM?

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME.

Desert,

As Iceberg requested, please use lower case (not all caps).

As for your friend who says that what he is doing is legal, he is mistaken. Doubtfully he will ever get caught at it, but he has to live with the conscience of being a thief. Or maybe he does not understand himself. I expect that he does, however.

If you have to do something special, load some new software to your receiver to make the channels come through as "unscrambledd" than you or he would be circumventing the encryption process that is supposed to prevent you from viewing those signals which are for sale.

What a lot of hackers proclaim, is that if "If I am not paying for it, then it is FTA". That bugs me as that puts every site related to FTA (even sites regarding TRUE FTA) under scrutiny. Sure it is free to them, they stole it! LOL! How much more free can it be? And how much more illegal can it be, as well?

Put it this way, if a bank makes an error in your paycheck deposit and moves the decimal point two or three places over and you end up with a deposit of $1,477,590.00 instead of $1,477.59.... Is that FREE for you to keep? Or illegal?

You didn't actually walk into the bank and demand that money at gunpoint and you weren't responsible for the error that provided your account with this bonus. So what is illegal about it?

It violates the law! That is what is illegal about it. You didn't earn it, so it is not your money, you didn't pay for it, so it is not yours to have. It is not FREE and it is not yours!

True FTA TV relies upon advertising and donation support money to run their business. Those channels are FREE TO AIR, free for anyone who wants to watch them. If those channels are coming in without you (or anyone else) modifying the receiver to get them, then they are legitimate FTA channels and anyone may view them if they want to set up the necessary equipment (hardware).

AcWxRadar

 

[emuman100]

Actually, hidden in the bowels of the ATSC standard, is a mini standard for conditional access. Whether this will ever be used, I'm not sure. And most pay TV customers these days expect the provider to hook everything up and set everything up for them. I doubt that'll go ever well. especially if something breaks.

And I call it TVRO, because not only do I receive the unencrypted channels, I have a subscription to the encrypted ones, such as my Weather Channel Affiliate subscription.