I'm betting, like me, your previous home's owner left you a cruddy 18"... if that's the case there's not much you can see in the skys without replacing the dish, getting a true fta receiver, and possibly a motor. Theres a thread in the faqs somewhere where Ice explains what few freebie dish network channels you can pick up with an 18" dish. You can't pick up Direct TV fta since it does not exist... they scramble everthing. However, dish network does not - may seem odd that you can pick up some freebie dish network stuff on a direc tv setup, but that's the way that it works unless you have a direc tv or dish network subscription - which lets you pick up stuff besides true fta since you get the scrambled stuff... If you are after a non-dish network or direct tv satellite, of which there are many, you need, as mentioned, a bigger than 18" dish, and probably another receiver than the one that you got for direc tv setup.