People never learn..........

[truckracer]

Now with our blessed internet and public discussion forums which are nice it seems that everyone continues to post the feeds that they find on various sats. While i wish that we could share 100% of our finds when scanning the skies it appears that corporate greed monitors all of the threads and takes action to curtail the enjoyment of home big dish owners.

As all of you may well know, we have lost another feed from free to air because of public posting. Earlier we lost a great feed that has been beat to death on this site and others.

Years ago in sales manager training we had a course how to get information out of people. back then it actually took some skill. Now all you do is just log onto the internet and everyone writes and posts everything they know.

Now the strongarm in the sky has taken action. Enough said.... I think we should have learned from our mistakes by posting feeds. Folks i am asking you to please quit posting your feed information. If anything just email the members that you know and trust. Most all of us have blind search receivers and we all know that we are going to do our scans of various birds and we may find new things.

By posting your feeds you are taking away our free to air signals one by one. Free to air tv goes completely against the american business model of the tv industry. We would be paying mandatory fees for local broadcast stations if a few people had their way!

The good thing is that not a lot of folks have big dishes anymore and i think that if everyone keeps thier finds on "downlow" the big dish will continue to open up.
Thanks for your cooperation in keeping
our free to air free- Trucker

 

[tdti1]

Some people never learn and they will be the death of our hobby.

 

[Stargazer]

Those companies that have those feeds launched are bound to know that they can be picked up for free. There is not even enough people that are doing the FTA thing to hurt them is there?

 

[dfergie]

HBO and VCII started that years ago for us C-band folks...and there was no net then. And it does suck to lose something... I used to watch the live NFL feeds...

 

[Diamond Jim]

As I have said over and over, when a service is launched I am sure that the wheels that run the show know that it is being watched by unauthorized viewers, if they don't they are not as smart as we give them credit for. There are hundreds of reasons for encrypting signals and I willing to bet that posting the locations in public forms is low on the list. Some Jr Vice President at HBO came up with the scrambling idea in the mid 80s for 2 reasons 1)to impress his bosses and 2)greed. That was long before the internet and satellite forms.

 

[truckracer]

i agree with all of you on this

The above posts are exactly right. I do agree that the engineers know that when they uplink an open signal that people somewhere will receive it without being authorized. I also agree that there are not that many of us free to air hobbyists out there. But i am afraid that in the eyes of the "corporate beancounters" we could be a threat. To some of these people, one dollar is good as ten.

I think most small or upcoming tv stations and program providers do not start out with encryption or scrambling for the simple reason it is expensive and requires technicians with higher salaries and more expensive uplink equipment.

I believe the goal of most up and coming tv stations and program providers are to be "premium services" that would be carried on cable systems and satellite providers.

However one lesson that was learned very well in the 80's by the major networks was when the mass public was running for the big dish to get free programming.

Our public posting of our finds can only speed the process of encryption. After all free to air is just what it is. What you see today may not be there tomorrow. It is a vast pool of programming changing by the hour. However I think we should not post our finds to possibly prolong our enjoyment of the feeds. Trucker

 

[Diamond Jim]

Good points Truckeracer.... You can take this however you want, but I did not buy a satellite dish to get programing for free. The reason I bought it was that the cable system here was terrible in the early 80s (not much better now) and we only had 13 channels. The worst part is that 6 of the channels were repeaters, here in Terre Haute we had 3 stations that did CBS, NBC and ABC and these morons were also showing the CBS, NBC and ABC channels from Indianapolis. That left us room for an independent from Indianapolis, PBS from Bloomington, another CBS from Champaign, Il which did the Cub games, one HBO and a cable advertisment channel. Not much to choose from, right? I bought the dish to get more, it just happened to be free at the time. I have no problem paying, I would say we have helped NPS stay in business the last 20 years.

 

[truckracer]

I agree, I am getting a dsr-922 sometime after thanksgiving and before christmas. I wish to subscribe to a package and the cinemax/hbo package. a guy around the corner has 4dtv and it kills any pizza dish or cable in pic and audio quality. Our cable system here is ok if you have a standard def tv, but you hook it to a big screen.....
it looks like %$&^*!. LOL. Even the digital cable looks bad in my opinion. Some of those 4dtv signals look better than some dvd's i have watched.

of course aside from the pic and sound quality of the big dish, it is nice to know that if you would ever get short on cash and could not afford programming, there is still something free to watch that has great pic quality and sound. I am with you that i don't mind at paying for programming, but i think after you stand big dish quality up against the cable systems and pizza dish companies, then factor in their programming prices, if you have room for a BUD, and don't have kids that want to watch seperate channels at the same time, the bud is the way!
Have a happy Thanksgiving.
Trucker

 

[dfergie]

I got my BUD in the early 80's because:

1. No Cable available out in the country where I live. ( a enterprising person did put one in covering the area south of town and a small village about 6 miles from me... after a couple of years After he ran the lines the town Cable sys bought him out)
2. 3 OTA's were available NBC,CBS and ABC all required a very good antenna.
It was really nice to be able to watch Hbo, Sho, Spotlight and Cinemax plus all the channels that were just getting started that are now staples.. Usa etc... plus getting all the live feeds for NFL games... I spent Sunday morning before the games finding the feeds which required going outside cranking the dish from sat to sat then coming inside and hunting one polarity before using the antenna roter to hunt the other frequencys (Vertical and Horizontal...)we have came a long way since then

 

[Diamond Jim]

Guys, I wouldn't trade it for anything . It has always been great and now it's greater since I have the Satworks hooked up to it.

 

[bidaw]

Well, I just started with cband within the last week, so far I am just analog and dvb. I hope to get a 4dtv to test the rest. Right now I am interested in finding out the most channels I can get in the clear without subscribing, but if I ever have to subscribe...it would be nice to do this a-la-carte instead of having to buy a full cable package or pizza dish packages that are bloated with channels that I would never watch. An this is coming from a man with hundreds of channels of tv now that I would never watch...well I watch it sometimes!

 

[sattec]

8ft miralite....uniden, vc-2 & digicypher 2 , phazer v5.2 software, its great! I refuse to "buy" channels, I don't want to "watch tv", I want the "ham radio with picture" effect. I'm a hobbiest......my wife watches her shows on dbs, I'm scanning the sky, I make my living knowing "what it is" and "how to do it". I'm a product of yrs of sky scanning. At this moment, I'm watching a car chase in OKC on c-band( recorded earlier)

 

[ohiosteve]

Fyi

It was not HBO that came up with scrambling idea - it was actually Ted Turner. In reality, he was looking at "greedy" dollar signs when he contacted Scientific Atlanta back then to create the VC back then. He took that to HBO and Disney (the two that went first I believe) and showed them he could make them lots of money selling their programming and ensuring that people had to purchase it. In fact, he was the first reseller of satellite programming. He also got into a pickle because he became a monopoly in that business. Imagine how much everyone would be paying for their subscriptions if he was allowed to continue without competition. I think it would have been long time later if the "networks" had to deal with customers on their own. It was a great idea, but hurt the guys that were watching it while it was free.

Just my two cents.
Steve

As I have said over and over, when a service is launched I am sure that the wheels that run the show know that it is being watched by unauthorized viewers, if they don't they are not as smart as we give them credit for. There are hundreds of reasons for encrypting signals and I willing to bet that posting the locations in public forms is low on the list. Some Jr Vice President at HBO came up with the scrambling idea in the mid 80s for 2 reasons 1)to impress his bosses and 2)greed. That was long before the internet and satellite forms.

 

[voomvoom]

Steve, I don't know how true any of that is, but it's all believable. Only, when I started satelliting in 78, there was a movie service called Orion. This service was encrypted with Orion technology. They had an east and west feed and this service folded before HBO ever scrambled there first signal. So, I know Ted didn't invent the idea, but he probably helped influence the matter, as well as maybe talking HBO into giving it a try. But, in the guide publications at the time, HBO were heavily into taking backyard dish owners to court for stealing signals, which were perfectly in the clear. They lost these cases primarily (I believe), because the technology was already available. In other words, if they didn't want people watching there signal, scramble it. Which they did. At the time they didn't want to offer it to the backyard dish owners, but Congress made them. I think maybe the former Vice President, Al Gore, was a major part of the Congress decision. He apparently had a dish in his backyard.

Al

 

[tdti1]

Yup wish we had someone to fight for us now since there are many feeds that we could get with our 4dtv's if the programmers had to offer them to us...

 

[Stargazer]

The difference this time compared to the 80's is that there is a subscription service now available where as back then it wasn't like that.

 

[truckracer]

4dtv

i think now that motorola does not invest much time in engineering 4dtv products nor do they market the stuff very well. When was the last time anyone saw a 4dtv advertisement. We see the pizza dish and cable companies advertise all the time, but not 4dtv. I know that everyone cannot have a big dish in their yard, nor does everyone have a good view of all the satellites necessary for 4dtv, but a lot of folks do and would have it if it were advertised and made attractive.

i feel sorry for all these people going out and buying hdtv sets and connecting them to pizza dishes and cable services. most of these overcompressed and washed out signals look worse on the new tv's than they do on the old ones.

I realize that 4dtv cannot easily have several different receivers in the same house and everyone watch different channels, but the quality certainly is stunning.

Cable and pizza all have their place, but there are many people who would have 4dtv because of its choices, pic and audio quality.

motorola also does not load all of the "in the clear" DC II channels in the channel maps. They used to but not now. There is some software floating around the web that allows you to manually update the channel map.
Do not mistake this with hacking! It does not compromise the conditional access system of the 4dtv receivers. It simply tells the receiver where the DCII free to air channels are located. I have never used this but read about it. I can't say for sure first hand if it works or not. I do imagine that you take a risk of screwing up your receiver since it updates the firmware.

 

[Diamond Jim]

Truckracer,

Have you ever heard about the hidden feeds on the 4DTV system?

 

[digiblur]

I think maybe the former Vice President, Al Gore, was a major part of the Congress decision. He apparently had a dish in his backyard.

Al

Then Al Gore moved along and invented the internet.

 

[tdti1]

It is the channels that askes to be added to the map or to be removed, I am sure Mot would love to map all the free DCII feed though they are not allowed to.