Free Satellite TV with Dumpster Dived Dish
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- Some experiments with free-to-air (FTA) satellite stuff, using mostly the same equipment as my DIY radiotelescope project. I've added a couple devices that actually cost money, namely a $20 FTA receiver (set top box) and a $6 LNB (the deal that goes at the end of the dish). The rest of the equipment was found in the trash or scavenged from stuff my work was throwing out.
I am not into electronics or anything, but I came across your channel and I find your projects fascinating.
I just found this channel and i love it! brings me back to when i played with free-to-air satellites back in early 2000's. I had a Invacom QPH-031 on a motorized dish which i used to hunt for live feeds.
love the idea of reusing other people's trash for something good they couldn't think of, its kind of satisfying, anyways I was camping in the Lake district years back off in the wilds of Wanny and I had a handheld HAM radio but couldn't get many stations so I rigged up the aerial to a wire sheep fence and it was amazing how many I I now had, thinking about it that wore fence was about 15 miles long by 5 foot high, so a lot of catchment area, I didn't think it would work and did it just for something to pass the time one night, whenever I see HAM radio masts in peoples gardens with wires stretched from pole to pole I think you haven't seen anything like the one I had,
"Duct tape: The handyman's secret weapon." Red Green. It's pretty cool that you could acquire any channels at all. Thanks for the entertainment.
If you use a polar mount on the rotator (basically just a bent pipe aligned in the correct direction), you can scan all the geostationary satellites without worrying about elevation control. Plus it also serves to keep the LNB correctly set for "skew" Much cheaper alternative to that PTZ mount. You can also switch the linear LNB between H and V by changng its input voltage (the receiver should do that automatically), and if it is not a wideband LNB, switch it between high and low band with a 22kHz (I think) tone on the power - again something the receiver should do automatically.
Great video. When I got into satellite hobby back in 2018 I used a 40 cm Ku Band dish an RT Inverto Universal LNB single output, Amiko Mira HD receiver. It tooke me more than one hour to find the Astra 19.2 East satellite but I finnaly succeded and received more than 200 channels. Best part I could watch MTV Germany and Viva Germany. MTV is free, unfortunately Viva is replaced by Comedy Central Germany (still free on satellite). Later I learned that you need a bigger dish to receive more channels on the same satellite, no prolems during rain and bad weather also a motor or actuator. I recommend a 100-120 cm satellite dish for Ku Band and an USALS H-H motor the advantage is that you don't need extra cable for the H-H motor. You control on your satellite receiver and your coaxial cable RG6 is enough. In Europe there are hundreds of channels Free To Air and have very good content.
Astra 19,2 °E is not 1 satelite, but 4, Astra 19,2 °E consists of these satellites : Astra 1KR ,Astra 1L, Astra 1M, Astra 1N . And MTV germany was encrypted from 2011 until 2017. I was waitching MTV Switzerland all these years, they where broadcasting on another satelite but it was the same as the german version( i know because a friend of mine had a paytv subscription and they had mtv in their basic plan)until MTV germany started to broadcast in SD for free again. But over the years the shows got worse (people just don't like pay tv here, it was actually preaty dumb for mtv to encrypt the main mtv channel, they have gone from a popular channel to a channel barely anyone is watching)
3:20 - the mysterious readout tells you how good the content you're picking up is.
6:28 Haha, great! 😄 "We finally got some free TV but it Jezus-TV ..... so not very useful" 😆
Very interesting. Here in Germany most TV channels from the satellites are free. But you have to pay a monthly fee to the country per household. As everyone with an internet connection, Radio or TV has to pay it, you don't have to pay extra for TV reception. But there are special paid services like "Sky" (for most sport shows) where you need a special receiver or an extra card for the receiver/TV to decrypt it. You also need a card to receive some normal channels in a higher quality. But the official channels are free even in HD (as they get your money from the monthly fees).
So they’re free but you pay monthly? Hmmm…
@@thatonetime7514 Yes, you have to pay that fee anyway. So you don't need to pay extra to watch TV.
Hehe i live in Norway and the here we see German television which my dad set up with a giant ass parabol my dad fixed yesrs ago
well hello fellow 19.2 astra viewer
@@rubysamurai306 while your dad is at it, tell him about 28.2 satelite in UK. Most channels are free-to-air (similar system to germany) and you should be able to see it from Norway (i do from Sweden)
Im glad someone said it, duct-tape is highly technical.
200 mph tape is awesome. That’s why nascar uses it. Absolutely Feckin Awesome
I've looked into satellite TV every now and then as i think the tech is cool, but looking at whats available from the satellites flying above Australia, its genuinely slim pickings.
Wow, i just stumbled on your channel and this is exactly what I want to do, experiment with saved parts. Thanks for the video!
Most of your satellites are circling at the equator you may have to get some elevation with your dish in order to get a better view of that region. Even here in Southern Louisiana the satellite dishes are pointed towards the South just about the tree line.
not much of an issue.
The Clark Belt indeed it's in the equator, but if the satellite footprint reaches the US, everything will be fine.
Satellites' footprints commonly gets blocked along the meridians but not too much along the tropics
I finally got my hands on a dish and when I saw the same SDR my eyes lit up!
Very interesting educational content! Kudos from Canada.
lmao I love that that little screen is called a "world star"
That's an honest review right there.
That CCTV was on 95 west - 97 west is the daddy of all ku sats like I said in a previous comment. Your use of a camera tilt is ingenious and I might use that for ham satellites as they are not geostationary. I basically use an antenna and point it toward the satellite as the go across the sky. Hams talk to one another and provide our Gridsquare location and a signal report and of course our call.
I haven't gotten into hamsats yet but it's something I'd like to try! I also have an old C-band dish junking up my back yard right now that needs a pointing system and mount when I get around to it.
Genuine question: Do you hams talk about anything other than your callsign, where you're messaging from, how clear the signal is, a d what equipment you're using?
TLDR: Do you guys actually have conversations or just check boxes?
Awesome channel. You are very smart and resourceful. ❤🎉
You didn't find a lot, but I still found it interesting.
For linear satellites you need to skew the dish because that will give you better reception. The LNB you used doesn't need to be rotated, old LNBs require it or LNBs installed in banks and certain businesses which are designed to get only one polarization.
It's amazing how ppl in the US look at FTA satellite broadcast as some weird alien tech while everyone else has been using them since the mid 90s, not criticizing, I find it cute 😊
ua-cam.com/video/q2CCl3CxGgI/v-deo.html
This is an all in one tool used by satellite technicians to set the dish properly, you will find such tool fun/easier to use
Thanks for speaking for ppl in the US. I didn't realize I was supposed to look at it as alien tech. I will do so now.
@@jam9297 seems like I needed to make the "not criticizing" remark bold, didn't mean to offend anyone
It was big in the US back then. They started encrypting everything and now most FTA stuff is either religious or not in English, hence why it has almost completely fallen out of favor.
Living in the USA I find FTA satellite a whole lot more interesting than anything we can get locally or through a subscription service like dish network. Id rather watch galaxy 19 than pay $150 a month for stuff that's mostly manufactured drama. At least G19 is mostly real life stuff like news and documentaries I can learn something from. It's always interesting to see the rest of the world.
Just found you a little while ago but I love your videos!
I have faith you can get the good channels for free.😂 your a pretty smart guy.
I use the famous network , it’s called R- communications you know the one that always has a pirate saying Rrrr my neighbors free satellite ! Lol. You sure know your way around wires and do-dads ! You got me thinking about go-cart railroad , I have 2 RR trucks with 2 RR wheels on each and a crap load of motors and small snowmobile trannies and everything needed to build a 6 person motorized RR car all I need is a super long RR Line that’s in ok shape and not used anymore. Like from my house to Duluth ! Lol. Even better from my house to Las Vegas ! Lmao. Fuel up , set the cruise and kick back all the way to sin city , USA ! Something like a motor home ! Lol
Biggest problem I see using the ptu mount is that the skew of the LNBF remains at whatever degree you installed it at. Commercially available dish movers have an inverted polar mount to account for skew as you move across the satellite arc.
Also I’ve found that while you can use dish network or directv dishes the best scavenged dishes to use are hugesnet internet dishes because they are larger.
I bought a couple RV dishes with built-in motors and they just have the pan/tilt setup as well. Maybe I'll do a custom mount for my big C-band dish when I get around to installing it.
@@saveitforparts haven’t come across any of the automatic RV dishes personally but I’d assume if you wrote your own software to move it I wouldn’t see any reason you couldn’t track the arc.
But nearly all of the DTH dish services dishes are too small for reliable free to air use. At best you can pick up the higher power FTA services and not reliably. Dish services get away with smaller dishes because they are pushing a lot of power.
A 90cm dish is considered required to reliably pick up most KU FTA signals and 120cm can be used with a special mount and scaler and a C-band LNBF for higher powered c-band signals. And a minimum of a 10’ dish, with a few caveats, for reliable c-band signals.
I use dish network dishes for stationary dishes, they are cheap and plentiful and easily modified. Reliability of signal is the main downfall in snow and rain. And as mentioned before only on more powerful signals.
The other hurdle now adays is a reliable way to control the actuator to move a c-band dish. Before trade relations with China heated up under Trump (not being political just stating what happened) the best option was a Titanium satellite ASC-1 dish mover paired with and FTA receiver would reliably and move the dish automatically (once set up) with the single Fta remote. It also allowed use of older style feed horns with polarity actuators, which are superior to modern voltage controlled LNBF’s though much more expensive. You might be able to find a used ASC-1 on eBay and I recommend it over the other option as it’s cheaply built and the relays will fail, quickly. It is also possible if you have an old receiver with motor control to move a c-band dish but it is not automated .
There are a few forums, most notably satelliteguys.us that will have a lot of information on FTA, from setup to hardware it’s all there. Just no talk of hacking or pirating is allowed. Another forum that can have decent information is ricks satellite but he’s got a pretty tight control over hardware discussions and you will be banned for talking about anything he doesn’t sell as he seems those cheep China receivers and those are a forbidden subject.
In the UK, all of our satellite transmissions are linear polarisation (we tend to only use Astra 2 for our satellite TV) but we have two types of LNB.
There's the older universal type andthe wideband type.
The universal type tunes to a channel (and automatically switches polarisations without having to rotate the LNB) while the wideband LNB has two outputs, one for the entire spectrum on a horizontal polarisation and one for the entire spectrum on a vertical polarisation.
Older Sky and Freesat boxes need the unversal type and Sky Q and maybe the newer Freesat boxes use the wideband type.
The " Sporbeam"😂 Its so spot on, i live in germany and can recive every channel 😃😂
😊
You need to have a H2H mount to track the satellites and adjust the skew, or else you can't get anything
The tracker you have will not adjust the skew the way the H2H motor does
Actually you can receive wildfeed sports - you can find feed frequencies by going to lyngsat- but I’ve got to tell you, the camera tilt thing is nifty and using a sdr. My satellite has a stab which is a horizon to horizon rotator that uses ucals
You definitely hit one of the nimiq Sat's off the bat
Loved how you made the dish rotate with the mount
It's not a fantastic mount, just an old security camera base. I need to get or make a bigger one!
We have free sat in Europe, actually good content
Wishing we didn't scrap our old huge dish now. Just for the fun of playing with it apparently not a lot of useful TV.
Yeah I kind of want more old huge dishes for radio astronomy and weather satellite downlinks and stuff. Gotta make my house look like a TV station :-D
In India, the public broadcaster owns a free dth service - DD Free Dish.
It has over 150-200 channels.
It has all the FTA channels from all the broadcasters in India which includes channels from sony, disney star, viacom18.
The only problem most of the channels are in MPEG-2 format which broadcasts in SD quality.
And no sports channels except DD Sports that only broadcasts matches involving Indian national team and it also has no HD feed.
I made a can tenna and made a pan tilt contraption out of and old gear drive power seat components off of the track and gears and electric motor and was able to bend the gears in away that i made it all work, i got the parts off of a 66 Oldsmobile tornado and it worked great
I wish I would have a Directv when I get a new house
This might be an old video and I'm not sure if you know this allready, but the first satalite you found seems to have been for bell satalite TV in Canada
I think that the first satellite that you received is from a company named Bell. Because they have these free previews.
I’m a ham so I find your Chanel pretty cool
So you’re looking…
You’re looking…
You’re looking….
You find Jesus. And you keep looking.
Dude?
just take the AAA batteries out and stretch the springs back out. the batteries squished em down prolly.
Can we technically use this method to connect to specific satellites like the ones that Dish network uses? Probably not, since they're using possibly encrypted signals that your home setup just won't capture, and the Hopper dvr does more than record programs.
Why this method? There may be a chance of cutting from $140 a month to zero if this works. Don't know where you're at, but in my case its northwest Arkansas.
All this guy needs is the big dish, the purpose of the small dish is meant to be paired with a descambler. Your only gonna get highend wide range signals without one. The larger dish allows you to pick up all the signal of low end channels/signals.
Maybe you could be interested in quattro-LNBs. They give you 4 different outputs, two for vertical and two for horizontal with one high and low band each.
Interesting, I still don't know that much about actual commercial TV since I end up doing other stuff with these.
Ok, we finally got some free tv, but it's Jesus TV, so it's not very useful.
Maybe you are a demon
My friend growing up was always way stronger than me. It took me a while to find out why.
His family had awful tv reception and could only get trinity broadcasting network. There was a pull up bar in the backyard. Entertainment focused around the backyard. I’m going to try the same tactic with my kid.
Well Jesus tv might make your soul stronger
The first thing you find is Jesus... That outta tell you something !! 🙏
@@huf67tells me they can’t even give it away 😂
You said "recieving head" lol
your voice sounds remarkably similar to another youtuber I watch named uxwbill. he's into vintage electronics and other things.
neet that channel that you were pulling in on the circular LNB was actually bell satellite free preview channel at Nimiq 6 at 91.1°W
Nice project man. I looked up satellite tv because i am bored
I think you're on to something with that pan and tilt motor. Good thinking.
Started to chuckle, about 3:15, when your readout display was showin', "POO."
Must be an indicator of the build quality on these cheap import electronics :-D
The more eyes on the lnb the more satellites you can catch simultaneously
I remember back in the late 90s, my uncle used to get raw sat feeds for NFL games.
Dude who sold him the equipment was called Meathead lol
Used to buy cracked cable boxes off of him, too. I remember watching Tyson bite off Hollyfield's ear on one of those boxes 😂
Red Green would be proud.
FTA Satelite TV = fringe TV. With a few exceptions, nearly all of the channels have low production quality or rebroadcasts of foreign channels. Basically, channels that cable companies do not carry because most Americans have no interest in the programming content. However, If you want to watch shopping channels without having to get cable, the FTA sat TV might be a good fit.
Yeah, I figured it was mostly foreign propaganda and religion, and that seemed to be the case. I know there's some PBS / NASA stuff on C-band, I jut have to get my bigger dish set up.
@@saveitforpartsI think much of what is on FTA Satellite can also be found on IPTV, so for people with decent internet speeds can get the same programming as FTA without the extra hardware. I am not expert on IPTV, so not exactly sure what is out there other than is very similar to FTA Sat TV... I have a C-Band sat dish, but it has been retired for many years now. It was cool and fun in back in the 80s and into the 90s before Direct TV. Use to watch prime TV shows (ie Star Trek - The Next Generation) uploaded to the networks about 1 week before they air nationally and sport backhauls, all without the commercials.
There are some FTA feeds of NBC and a few other "real channels" on the ku band but most anything of interest is on C band
From Aoba satellite communication thank you.
**accidentally decodes Russian invasion plans months before action**
"Red Dawn" warning alert station.
Waiting for your channel to blow up.
You can get NASA channel with the circular lnb.... but all the other FTA channels are junk
Oh well. I guess ill get Al gore television after I get everything set up. 😅😅😅
Also your lnbf you have there has an internal switch based on voltage that will shift from vertical to horizontal polarity also keep in mind the lnb will be straight up at your longitude and begins to shift as you go across the horizon. - you may know all of this already but I’ve been using satellites for breaking news since 1998 when I started my political website. SNG (satellite trucks) send up news reports from all over the country. That gave us a heads up on breaking news.
Interesting on the polarity switch, I'll have to look into that. It would be fun to do a more dedicated downlink station but I have too many projects going on :-)
im wondering if maybe when i next time visit canada and usa i should bring my DVBT/T2 HD mini tv i think it had canada as a region on it.
tho tech for Free tv or Ones with a card slot so u can pay using ur own box that also have a terrestrial Freeview tv tuners
are so good now i found some reviews of combo boxses have most if not all regions.
tho in England if u live in a town called Brighton u can receive France1 and france2 on a England TV.
I have a hord of Direct-tv international dishes just for this reason. They use a ku lnb but it's orientation is fixed. I forget which way but they still work for FTA.
Once you get one geostationary satellite you should be able to get them all as they are on the same arc across the sky. The only geostationary satellites you will receive are the ones whose footprint is North America.
3:37 this looks like you found a bell satellite for paid tv and you might be able to get those preview channels
Seems easier if you would of made sat into a regular HDTV antenna.
Nice Video
All else fails, that directv dish could make a good snow sled.
You could put a dual LNB setup on it, have one vertical one horizontal.
What about a Universal lNB?
@@navigatorjack6969 Never seen one. Though could see a triple mount, put a vertical polarized, a horizontal polarized, and a circular polarized LNB up. Basically one of each. Then you could use all three types on one dish.
You want to move a little bit, and wait
2 or 3 degrees at a time
Yeah I was thinking the rate he is moving it, he could not find a transmitter on a power pole.
Being from eurup ghe fact that the lmb did not have both horizontal and vertical pol. Kind of surprised be as that js standard here and the switching between the 2 actual antennas ( both actually 4 ( 9ne for the high and one for the low band on each pol)) is done with signalling from the stb. One other thing that looked strange (,probably related to the fact that you might be quite a few degrees south of me is how tilted the dish was. Just a tip ( in cas you did not know already) there are sites out there that allows to to input your location and the sat you want to receive to get the actually azimuth an elevation you need for a good strong signal, e aware tho thepat the kater generation sattelites are able to focus there coverage areas much tighter than the older gens so ther might be way fewer fta channels out there to catch as you might not be able to catch lical channels from several states over. Anyway gifpd luck and thanks for the video.
I can hear the Red Green theme playing...
Will the first satellite looks like Bell TV which is Canadian.
Polarization switching is done by the receiver not by rotating the LNB
Good to know, I'll see if my cheap receiver has a setting for that next time I try it!
We have like 190 free to Air channels from our INSAT 4A here in India. Most of them are educational classes. All the news channels are Indian propaganda though. But yeah we get movies music and all
Hello, good morning, first of all, thank you for the information in this type of tutorial and hunting for FTA satellites.
I live in a city in Texas and I just started doing this as a hobby, since in this city there is nothing to do, I am in a small town called Las Lomas with only about 1000 visitors, and watching your tutorials one day I managed to It will work and I found a satellite, but I did not pay attention to the angle of inclination. Reading and watching tutorials I found (I think this is my mistake) that if I am on the north side I must remove -24 degrees if I use offset plates (offset plates). Directv or dish) of the Elliptical and Round type, and I tried this but it does not give me the signal (otherwise the Converter and the universal lnb) is in good condition and works well, so excuse me if you would also be kind to tell me where this is my mistake
Sincerely AlfTex
I've found dishpointer.com to be really helpful for aiming at specific satellites. It shows you on a map which way to point, and tells you the elevation angle and the skew (how much to rotate the dish). It's a little annoying to find specific satellites in the giant drop-down list, but once you know the orbital slot (degrees E or W) of the satellite you want, you can find it quicker. The other website I've used is lyngsat.com, which lists what free channels are on specific satellites. Hope that helps!
Bro, if you ever come to The Netherlands, your jay or beer on me! :D
Although it might cost a few hundred, wouldn't it be just easier and better to get a good outside antenna that requires nothing other than a wire running into the house and never needs rotating?
I need to figure out a good dish rotator / aiming system. Nobody really makes those anymore, since no one uses the big C-band dishes for TV. There are little rotors for small antennas, but they won't handle much weight.
Keep up the good work!
Does anyone agknowlage the fact he got Bell Canada Nimiq 91 and saw the Free Previews Channel?
That's no secret
You should go to some countries and see those dishes like mushrooms to get free satellite TV
jesus tv 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 you find god my friend
Buen video amigo 👍
06:25 He said, "... but it's Jesus TV, so it's not very useful ..."
In Europe we have some hundreds of FTA channels...
WELL THIS IS 10 MINUTES OF MY LIFE i WILL NEVER GET BACK!
7:55 ... Jesus and Chinese propaganda... LOL...
In Europe we have loads of KU band satellites all main news channels from loads of EU, Turkish, Arab, Russian, a few Asians... We also have complementary TDT/DVB HD service of all EU countries accessible with cards, some is easy to get free.... Still going strong specially in Germany for free service...
That sounds better than the US, over here the only free stuff these small dishes can see is religion and shopping. I have some bigger dishes and I'll see what else I can pick up with those.
Looks like your dish needs to be wider over 3 feet. 6 or more would be better. I bought my setup. Did not have c but ku band though....I did pick up NBC sat it had cozi network and had a Jessy ventura show. Mine was over six years ago ..had a free channel on dish network a cars shop and rebuild channels. Did watch the Jesus channel sat learn a lot about scriptures. Had a motor and the channels changed to the sat automatically. A lot of the good free channels are on the c band I think. You have to rescan the receiver multiple times to pick up the sports feeds and by luck. Unless you had inside information. I scan one of my receiver so many times it ran out of memory and locked up. Don't know what happen junk I guess.
On 97 west you can get about 130 Chanel’s and about 45 audio Channels like Russiatoday and PressTV and the world radio network
So what is the advantage of using a direct tv satellite dish versus a normal TV Antenna?
The normal TV antenna works with ground based transmitters and the dish antenna can pick up the MUCH fainter signals from space think of the dish acting like a magnifying glass and the thing on a stick attached to the dish as ants
@@johnray854 how do you install all that?
when you find channels using trash satellite and you got paid channels for free then you switch to free satellite and you got jesus tv channels then you got chinese tv
HI SIR HOW MUCH WILL COST OF MOVING DISH? THE SAME SATELLITE DISH WHICH YOU SHOWN THE SAME YOU TUBE CHANNEL . M. QAMER JAWEED FROM KARACHI PAKISTAN.
Hi, I'm curious. where can i get any of this knowledge, as a complete beginner like, "wow, how can i learn that".
This is one of my early satellite experiment videos, I just started poking around with old junk I collected and seeing what I could do with it. Even when I get things wrong, I try to learn from it!
People still watch the TV?
You're doing it all wrong. You need a a cheap dvb S2/t2 receiver. A cable signal strength. A universal LNB such as a Bullseye BEO1. My cheap tuner is a GT Media V7 Plus. You entirely remove the Asian European satellites and put in American. The hard part is instructions but they're not all that hard. A second LNB on a second dish will help most people grab two satellites. Switch cables with an old fashioned TV or game cable selector AB switch. The polarity is set on auto but the LNB needs to be rotated left or right a bit for most satellites. All satellites are in the Park Belt.
I have several receivers and the gtmedia v7 plus is a really good one. I also have the gtmedia v8 satellite finder that is the coolest. Even the satellite installer wished he had one… told him it’s about 65 bucks and he about hit the floor as his equipment is hundreds of dollars
He’s not doing it “all wrong” just approaching it quite differently. He has a fta receiver there but has added a sdr dongle
Wait, what? I want to learn more. So I did an earthmoving job and had to remove 2 direct tv/dish network satellites from the site. I carried them home. Looking for a project. One dish was being used as of 2021 Xmas. Owner unsubscribed. I remember rv campers would use these to add pay service and carry them around for tv st camp sites. But I’d like to set mine up and use it for something cool. Any tips or advice? I’m a layman so I’m not a tech genius. I’m decent at mechanical skill as I have heavy equipment. Thanks
@@technicalitems731 forget the pay TV. You have to subsist with Free To Air ( fta ). Watch north coast hobbies how to reprogram and how to use a universal or a normal LNB. You don't use circular like dish or direct and the biggest dish or bigger DirecTV dishes are terribly small for most Ku satellite work.
What you describe is exactly what he's using....
Worldstar!
I'll be honest with you... As much TV I watch.. I don't really watch TV. Why do I need a Satellite when I have my Computer.
I don't really watch broadcast TV either. I was just curious what could be done with one of these old dishes. Probably would have been more interesting when I still lived in AK!
I don't watch TV either, if it was for me i would not even have one in my house but come on you are basically hacking and hacking is cool on itself, i want to do this even tho i will probably never watch anything
There guy on here called Robbie Strike He the master at these dishes go check him out