Satellite, Cable, Pay TV and all that stuff

[Stubblecat]

Here's a thread about the world of Satellite, Cable, Pay TV, Premium Channels and all that other costly crap with which we bide our time, waiting for death.

Anybody here got any sort of system? And how many channels do you have? What are your favorite 'niche' channels?

Do tell!

I'll start:

Yesterday my cable guy hooked up my Free-To-Air satellite system. What's FTA, you ask?
Well, it's sort of like the old 'rabbit ears on the TV set' setup, but instead of catching signals in the air, you're catching signals from satellites.

All perfectly legal, as many regular stations are transmitted for free.

Of course, all these FTA receivers have USB ports on them...

So I now have 1194 channels of premium awesomeness. About 50 channels are in high definition as well. Well, sort of hi-def. They're 720i. Still a far cry better than the regular 480 that most TV uses.

[AKmaro1]

Here at my house we've got Time Warner for the cable service, which isn't too bad. I was pretty happy with having Adelphia, but then they went bankrupt and Time Warner got our system. I know they've been busy lately upgrading our lines to fiber optic ones so we can handle their on-demand service, so better things are on the way I'm sure. The only complaint I have is a lack of the NFL channel so I can watch those few games we miss now in the regular season.

We do have a digital cable box, which is almost a necessity anymore, but I'm so waiting for on-demand to get here.

Some of the 'niche channels I like are

1. Fox Movie Channel
2. IFC
3. Flix movie channel
4. Big Ten Network, which we just got, thank God 'cause I'm a pretty big Penn State fan.
5. The Science Channel
6. The History Channel

[Obiwan176]

I have DirecTv and have just the basic. No movie channels for me. I see what I want and if I like it I will purchase it and watch it when I want.

I have 2 HD DVRs through them and that is the main reason for my service. I like to tivo the following:

Heroes, Smallville, 24, The Office, My Name Is Earl, Wipeout, Mythbusters(I love this show). I am sure I am missing some but that is why I have the DVRs. I can watch what I want when I have time. Not on someone else' schedule.

My favorite channels with my sevice are: Discovery, SciFi, G4, and The History Channel

[Todd]

I haven't heard of FTA until this minute. Is this available in the US?

[Stubblecat]

Totally. Just look for it on eBay and you'll find my local supplier here in Kitchener, Ontario (as well as dozens of others).

It's ridiculously simple. My cost was $520 for the entire hi-def system + the dish and all the hardware. I paid my cable guy $150 for the installation and setup. It took him 3 hours and it was a top-notch professional job. Everything was discrete and hidden away.

Now I just turn on the power and I get all the PPV channels, all the premium stuff... Everything.

The one downside is the occasional 'zapping' from the legit satellite providers. It happends every couple of months (usually during special event seasons like during the Superbowl and around Christmas). You have to wait anywhere between a few hours and a few days before a new code is ready on the 'support' sites. Load it onto your flash drive and slam it into your FTA receiver and you're hot to trot again!

[Todd]

So how can it legal if the cable companies 'zap' you and you need a hack code to access the channels?

[moviemom]

Wow! I didn't know anything like FTA even existed! I have good ole Dishnet. We don't have a ton of channels because we're trying to cut back on costs as much as possible. But I do enjoy A&E, Animal Planet, LMN, The Food Network and a few others.

[Stubblecat]

Originally Posted by Todd

So how can it legal if the cable companies 'zap' you and you need a hack code to access the channels?

The totally legal stuff is the roster of channels that you can get without any access codes.

There are something like 46 different satellites that can be picked up, depending on where you point the dish. The perfectly legal thing to do is to aim it at one of the many carrying all sorts of free stuff.

But the basic fact is that you can point it at whatever you like. All the FTA dealers know that, and that's what probably about 99% of the users have it for.

[AKmaro1]

Originally Posted by Obiwan176

I
I have 2 HD DVRs through them and that is the main reason for my service. I like to tivo the following:

Smallville, 24, I am sure I am missing some but that is why I have the DVRs. I can watch what I want when I have time. Not on someone else' schedule.

I knew there was something I liked about you Obiwan, Smallville freaking rocks! And I'm just starting to get into 24, my local Fox affililate is showing it on the weekends, and I caught most of Season 6 I believe. That's where they had to stop a nuclear bomb from being detonated, and President Palmer had the assassination attempt on his life, and Jack's Dad wanted to defect to China with Jack's Nephew.

And my GF is into Smallville as well, we started watching the whole series starting from the beginning. I've missed a fair amount of episodes myself, and she's hardly seen any. But we own the complete series so far on DVD, which was great 'cause we picked up most of the seasons for $14.99 each over last Christmas when they had some great sales at Best Buy!

So it's good to have another Smallville fan on board.

[Obiwan176]

Season 6 of 24 sucked hard. It was bad. The first 4 seasons were great and then they started to lose it a little.

As far as Smallville goes, I have watched since day one. I enjoy it but want it to go into another direction from where they have gone. I want the Justice League. There was an episode called Justice that was fantastic. One season was terrible though. I think it was season 4 when Lana does some weird crap. It was seriously retarded. But I still really like the show a lot.