That is illegal what he is doing.
Most of what you are going to find that is truly free is usually religious or ethnic TV or state-sponsored. Let's face it, leasing capacity on a satellite is expensive. A transponder usually goes for around $1500/hr last I heard. Fortunately a digital station only takes around 1/10th of that transponder to run. However, if you aren't charging the end customer, then you have to foot that bill yourself. Churches do this via donations and many ethnic channels are sponsored by the various nations to bring their programming to nationals living abroad.
You're probably not going to see the likes of TNT or Spike, etc., for free in a legal capacity. However, there are things called wild feeds. These are feeds that are being transmitted in the clear, but the information needed to tune them isn't publically available. So let's say for example that ESPN needs to be on site at a football game, film it, and then send it real time to their main headquarters for retransmission via all the pay services. Well, they'll uplink that game to the satellite and back down. A lot of times, it isn't sent up encrypted since it might only be live a couple hours and encryption costs money. So, if you have an FTA receiver that blindly scans the various frequencies (think police scanner) you could potentially find one of these games, programs, etc. It's a kind of a shot in the dark, but if you know that someone like ESPN has a contract to lease capacity on a particular satellite, you have a great chance of catching that event by sticking to just that one satellite.
The law doesn't prohibit you from receiving un-encrypted programming. However, modifying an encrypted signal without consent of the broadcaster is a crime.
Re: Fta Tv
Member #: 40846
Registered: 9/19/2005
Posted:
1493
Name:
Duane Vick
Name:
Duane Vick
Company:
Self-Employed
Occupation:
Installer
Location:
Phoenix AZ
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