Mailing List Archive

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Raymond Boettcher
<raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I just recently got 2 Satellite Dish's that were originally used for Dish
> Network and was debating on using them to setup Free-to-air Satellite
> Service at my house. However, it seems that there are a few different
> formats that are used for Satellite. But according to what I have
> researched it seems I need a DVB-S2 Tuner/Decoder card in order to make this
> work. I just wanted to know if there was anyone here that is also using
> Free-to-air Satellite Service that has managed to make this work with MythTV
> (in the US).

The Dish dishes are likely too small to be effective with FTA signals.
FTA signals are typically very weak.

> I found a website that talks about this very extensively, but it seems
> they are not from the United States. They also recommended a few S2 Cards
> that work flawlessly with Linux/MythTV, so I'm considering buying one of
> those tuner cards to expand my MythTV Channel Service. I just want to make
> sure that a S2 Card is what I should be using in the United States.

Yes, DVB-S2 is what you want.

> I was also looking through Schedules Direct and it doesn't seem that
> Free-to-air is listed as one of the options, however, several other
> satellite providers are listed and one of them looks like one of the
> providers for Free-to-air. However, I know that Free-to-air does transmit
> EPG Data over their stream and hopefully I'm right in assuming that leaving
> the tuner set to EIT Scan will also work with a Satellite Tuner Card as
> well.

Schedules Direct is working on FTA support. I was setting up equipment
so I could help with an alpha test and ended up not being able to
receive must (see weak signals above).

Tom
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I have a 70cm dish that used to work fine for FTA stuff, but I haven't used
it in years. It's a little bigger than your run of the mill Dish... dishes
though.

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 8:25 PM, Tom Hayward <esarfl@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Raymond Boettcher
> <raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > I just recently got 2 Satellite Dish's that were originally used for Dish
> > Network and was debating on using them to setup Free-to-air Satellite
> > Service at my house. However, it seems that there are a few different
> > formats that are used for Satellite. But according to what I have
> > researched it seems I need a DVB-S2 Tuner/Decoder card in order to make
> this
> > work. I just wanted to know if there was anyone here that is also using
> > Free-to-air Satellite Service that has managed to make this work with
> MythTV
> > (in the US).
>
> The Dish dishes are likely too small to be effective with FTA signals.
> FTA signals are typically very weak.
>
> > I found a website that talks about this very extensively, but it seems
> > they are not from the United States. They also recommended a few S2
> Cards
> > that work flawlessly with Linux/MythTV, so I'm considering buying one of
> > those tuner cards to expand my MythTV Channel Service. I just want to
> make
> > sure that a S2 Card is what I should be using in the United States.
>
> Yes, DVB-S2 is what you want.
>
> > I was also looking through Schedules Direct and it doesn't seem that
> > Free-to-air is listed as one of the options, however, several other
> > satellite providers are listed and one of them looks like one of the
> > providers for Free-to-air. However, I know that Free-to-air does
> transmit
> > EPG Data over their stream and hopefully I'm right in assuming that
> leaving
> > the tuner set to EIT Scan will also work with a Satellite Tuner Card as
> > well.
>
> Schedules Direct is working on FTA support. I was setting up equipment
> so I could help with an alpha test and ended up not being able to
> receive must (see weak signals above).
>
> Tom
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>

On 2013-01-04, at 8:29 PM, James Hall <Hall.JamesR@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a 70cm dish that used to work fine for FTA stuff, but I haven't used it in years. It's a little bigger than your run of the mill Dish... dishes though.

Where are you lattitude-wise? I think it it gets tougher to use the small dishes the further north you go.

- George
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I'm actually on the East Coast of Florida in the Melbourne Area.  So we are just a little south but mostly east of Orlando.

--- On Sat, 1/5/13, George Nassas <gnassas@mac.com> wrote:

From: George Nassas <gnassas@mac.com>
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Free-to-Air Satellite Service
To: "Discussion about MythTV" <mythtv-users@mythtv.org>
Date: Saturday, January 5, 2013, 12:05 AM

On 2013-01-04, at 8:29 PM, James Hall <Hall.JamesR@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a 70cm dish that used to work fine for FTA stuff, but I haven't used it in years. It's a little bigger than your run of the mill Dish... dishes though.

Where are you lattitude-wise? I think it it gets tougher to use the small dishes the further north you go.

- George
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George Nassas wrote:
>Where are you lattitude-wise? I think it it gets tougher to use the small dishes the further north you go.

It's more important where you are in relation to the "illuminated" footprint of the signal. I only know a little I've picked up over the years, and it's all European, but the principles will still apply. When a sat is put up, the transponders will be designed to focus the signal over a defined area - partly to control who an receive the signal, partly to maximise efficiency (signal sent where you don't want it is wasted power).

So imagine you are sat up in geostationary orbit and shine a torch down at earth. You can control where the patch of light lands, and by clever design of the optics, the shape of the illuminated area. Considering North America, if a service was aimed at (say) only Canada, then the transmissions would be aimed at Canada (so Canadians would get s good signal with a moderate size dish) - but northern USA would get some signal (it's not a sharp cutoff at the edge of the area), while sourthern USA would get very little (you'd need a HUGE dish to get a signal).

As a practical example, the guy tat runs the satcure.co.uk website lives in Greece now (well actually, on an island there) which is a much lower lattitude thant eh UK. The ex-pats there have been able to get UK satellite TV by using a large dish (about 1m IIRC vs 60 or 80 cm in the UK) because the signal is boardcat over a wide area and they are on the fringes of it. Recently some services have moved/are moving to a new sat/transponder which has better control over the footprint and people are finding that channels disappear as the services move. As they are out fo the published coverage area (so no coverage/signal strength information - see below), it's going to be a trial and error process to work out how big a dish will be needed to get a signal back - it may be that there's so little signal that the required dish would be far to big to be practical.

You may have to dig around, but I know some of the operators publish sharts showing the signal strength in their coverage area. Usually it's done "weather isobar" style, with lines setting out the areas that can receive a signal with a given size of dish. If you can find such a chart then it should answer your questions.
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I looked into this as well. The problem is the guide data that Myth depends on to function correctly. Best solution I could come up with was to grab channel data off of other services and remap the xmltv id data to the tuner you want to use. It's a clunky solution at best. In the end I just gave up. I still think it's possible, but I didn't need that channel that bad.

If you get it working, please share your solution with the list, as I think this has been discussed by a number of different folks, so there is interest.

Mark
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On Sat, 5 Jan 2013 07:54:41 -0500 (EST)
Mark <fairlane@springcom.com> wrote:

> If you get it working, please share your solution with the list, as I
> think this has been discussed by a number of different folks, so
> there is interest.

Are those channels worth all this trouble? When I was living in Europe
the only FTA channels I was watching were German ones. I think there
were hundreds of FTA channels but I never found them interesting.

--
Cheers, Saul
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On 01/05/2013 08:56 AM, Saul A. Peebsen wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Jan 2013 07:54:41 -0500 (EST) Mark wrote:
>> If you get it working, please share your solution with the list, as I
>> think this has been discussed by a number of different folks, so
>> there is interest.
> Are those channels worth all this trouble? When I was living in Europe
> the only FTA channels I was watching were German ones. I think there
> were hundreds of FTA channels but I never found them interesting.
>

And I'm guessing in the US (land of "if at all possible, force the
consumer to pay for it"), it's even worse.

Seems all that interests me are the NBC, Fox, CW type things--all of
which should be easily picked up using an antenna for OTA ATSC--and NASA
TV. (Based on http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html .)

Mike
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Well generally OTA channels aren't to interesting either.  But why not have them.  No doubt they will have a few programs that I will schedule to record.  I don't generally watch tv live anyway.  So if having a satellite available to record 3-4 more series of shows would make it worth it.

I really want to finish my program so I can import all of tubtub.com into my channel lineup....

Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Did you try EIT?  You would think that would at least work.

Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

So free-to-air is a European service?

Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Raymond Boettcher <
raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:

> So free-to-air is a European service?
>



There are many free to air sat services, we have one in NZ called Freeview.
There is FreeSAT in the UK plus there are services from other Euro
satellites.

I don't know about the US, but I doubt you will get any European satellites
that you can receive in mainland USA.

There is a list of American satellites here:
http://www.lyngsat.com/america.html

There are plenty of Sat tracking and info web sites out there.

Are there still free sat feeds available in the US? It's been years
since I used satellite (other than Dish)

Lee


Nick Rout wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Raymond Boettcher
> <raymondboettcher@yahoo.com <mailto:raymondboettcher@yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
> So free-to-air is a European service?
>
>
>
>
> There are many free to air sat services, we have one in NZ called
> Freeview. There is FreeSAT in the UK plus there are services from
> other Euro satellites.
>
> I don't know about the US, but I doubt you will get any European
> satellites that you can receive in mainland USA.
>
> There is a list of American satellites here:
> http://www.lyngsat.com/america.html
>
> There are plenty of Sat tracking and info web sites out there.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
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>

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On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Lee Maisel <maisel@lobo.net> wrote:

> Are there still free sat feeds available in the US? It's been years since
> I used satellite (other than Dish)
> Lee
>
>
I assumed so or else there was little point to Raymond's original post.

Then again assumption is the mother of all screw ups!

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Raymond Boettcher
<raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Well generally OTA channels aren't to interesting either. But why not have them. No doubt they will have a few programs that I will schedule to record. I don't generally watch tv live anyway. So if having a satellite available to record 3-4 more series of shows would make it worth it.
>
> I really want to finish my program so I can import all of tubtub.com into my channel lineup....
>
> Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

so funny you mention this...I stumbled across tubtub yesterday while
doing a search for 24 hr streaming news.

So what the heck are they? Where do they get streams like a 24hr Andy
Griffith Channel?
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no, FTA is available on every continent. It's not a brand, it's a type of service.

And yes, there are FTA channels in North America. Not a lot, but they are there.
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On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 5:57 AM, Ian Evans <dheianevans@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Raymond Boettcher
> <raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Well generally OTA channels aren't to interesting either. But why not
> have them. No doubt they will have a few programs that I will schedule to
> record. I don't generally watch tv live anyway. So if having a satellite
> available to record 3-4 more series of shows would make it worth it.
> >
> > I really want to finish my program so I can import all of tubtub.cominto my channel lineup....
> >
> > Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android
>
> so funny you mention this...I stumbled across tubtub yesterday while
> doing a search for 24 hr streaming news.
>
> So what the heck are they? Where do they get streams like a 24hr Andy
> Griffith Channel?
>


I can't get it to work at all. Is it geo-restricted?

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Nick Rout <nick.rout@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 5:57 AM, Ian Evans <dheianevans@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Raymond Boettcher
>> <raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Well generally OTA channels aren't to interesting either. But why not
>> > have them. No doubt they will have a few programs that I will schedule to
>> > record. I don't generally watch tv live anyway. So if having a satellite
>> > available to record 3-4 more series of shows would make it worth it.
>> >
>> > I really want to finish my program so I can import all of tubtub.com
>> > into my channel lineup....
>> >
>> > Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android
>>
>> so funny you mention this...I stumbled across tubtub yesterday while
>> doing a search for 24 hr streaming news.
>>
>> So what the heck are they? Where do they get streams like a 24hr Andy
>> Griffith Channel?
>
>
>
> I can't get it to work at all. Is it geo-restricted?

No clue. I can get it here in Canada. Don't know much about
it..haven't seen any write-ups.

I just wish someone like CNN would offer an HLS feed. I'd even pay a
small feed. 24hr news is the only thing missing from my OTA.
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I know right!!  But thats okay, I like tubtub.  I just want to be able to feed it directly into the MythTV System and allocate channel numbers for it.  I think they just got bored one day and decided to setup a pool of Windows Media Server's just so they can play old classic's and have their own commercials.  But at least they play all the good stuff.  They are one of the main reason's I'm writing my Network Tuner helper daemon.  MythTV has no support for MMS yet!

Raymond Boettcher

--- On Sun, 1/6/13, Ian Evans <dheianevans@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Ian Evans <dheianevans@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Free-to-Air Satellite Service
To: "Discussion about MythTV" <mythtv-users@mythtv.org>
Date: Sunday, January 6, 2013, 11:57 AM

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Raymond Boettcher
<raymondboettcher@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Well generally OTA channels aren't to interesting either. But why not have them. No doubt they will have a few programs that I will schedule to record. I don't generally watch tv live anyway. So if having a satellite available to record 3-4 more series of shows would make it worth it.
>
> I really want to finish my program so I can import all of tubtub.com into my channel lineup....
>
> Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

so funny you mention this...I stumbled across tubtub yesterday while
doing a search for 24 hr streaming news.

So what the heck are they? Where do they get streams like a 24hr Andy
Griffith Channel?
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On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Mark <fairlane@springcom.com> wrote:
> no, FTA is available on every continent. It's not a brand, it's a type of service.
>
> And yes, there are FTA channels in North America. Not a lot, but they are there.

[Old thread!]

I've completed writing a JSON grabber for Schedules Direct to go along
with the JSON service discussed here:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/557640

If you've got a FTA system and you'd like to help test the FTA lineup
(which will include stations from different geo regions all in one
lineup) then please let me know.

Thanks.
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On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Robert Kulagowski <rkulagow@gmail.com> wrote:
> [Old thread!]
>
> I've completed writing a JSON grabber for Schedules Direct to go along
> with the JSON service discussed here:
>
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/557640
>
> If you've got a FTA system and you'd like to help test the FTA lineup
> (which will include stations from different geo regions all in one
> lineup) then please let me know.

Bump.

Still looking for FTA people in North America that would like to get
listings without needing to configure multiple accounts at Schedules
Direct in order to get scheduling data.

Thanks.
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On Fri, 2014-05-09 at 16:07 -0500, Robert Kulagowski wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Robert Kulagowski <rkulagow@gmail.com> wrote:
> > [Old thread!]
> >
> > I've completed writing a JSON grabber for Schedules Direct to go along
> > with the JSON service discussed here:
> >
> > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/557640
> >
> > If you've got a FTA system and you'd like to help test the FTA lineup
> > (which will include stations from different geo regions all in one
> > lineup) then please let me know.
>
> Bump.
>
> Still looking for FTA people in North America that would like to get
> listings without needing to configure multiple accounts at Schedules
> Direct in order to get scheduling data.
>
> Thanks.

I keep looking at FTA satellite, and on one hard it seems intriguing,
but when I look at the channels that would be available in my region, it
just doesn't seem worth the initial cost outlay. Don't suppose anyone on
the list in North America using FTA could let me know you thoughts,
feelings, hardware used, etc.

Thanks,

Andrew.

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I'd find a way to get the wife on board if the options were anything
but the religious channels. Unfortunately, we'd need a BUD to get USA
Network, and no amount of begging is going to win that fight.

The only other option is if any channels will be airing the summer
Olympics. We both got really frustrated at NBC/Comcast's insistence
to show the same 3 countries rather than showing the best performances
(e.g. only showing USA, Canada, and Russian ice skating, while not
showing several gold/silver/bronze performances).

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 12:15 PM, Andrew C. Stadt <acstadt@stadt.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-05-09 at 16:07 -0500, Robert Kulagowski wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Robert Kulagowski <rkulagow@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > [Old thread!]
>> >
>> > I've completed writing a JSON grabber for Schedules Direct to go along
>> > with the JSON service discussed here:
>> >
>> > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/557640
>> >
>> > If you've got a FTA system and you'd like to help test the FTA lineup
>> > (which will include stations from different geo regions all in one
>> > lineup) then please let me know.
>>
>> Bump.
>>
>> Still looking for FTA people in North America that would like to get
>> listings without needing to configure multiple accounts at Schedules
>> Direct in order to get scheduling data.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> I keep looking at FTA satellite, and on one hard it seems intriguing,
> but when I look at the channels that would be available in my region, it
> just doesn't seem worth the initial cost outlay. Don't suppose anyone on
> the list in North America using FTA could let me know you thoughts,
> feelings, hardware used, etc.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrew.
>
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