Free to air v free to view
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ericmark

Free to air v free to view

by ericmark » Sun Jan 11, 2009 3:47 pm

Free to air satellite and terrestrial channels.
I see that Channel 4 was now no longer encrypted and can be received from satellite as well as terrestrial TV but I note that UK History is still encrypted on satellite although is available in the evening as well as during the day.
Free to air satellite receivers are very different to those supplied to watch sky one big point is you don’t need to wade through all the channels you can’t receive and you can remove the shopping channels, ******* channels etc. Many functions are dependent on make of course in the same way as with freeview receivers for terrestrial TV the main being how the electronic program guide works.
Once I had removed all the rubbish ******* and shopping channels, and duplicate BBC and ITV channels I have ended up with about 170 channels for TV of the 325 originally found on a scan of free to air only channels plus the 101 radio stations as yet unsorted.
But my box I swapped with my son-in-law as he wanted to view Turkish TV and his only box could not it seems be upgraded and for me it is only an extra to paid for Sky and Freeview to allow recording of one channel while watching another.
But the new box does have a slot. So here’s the question what channels are free to view but not free to air? Before for a one off payment to get around broadcast laws where some people like for example Channel 4 were not allowed to let their programs to be viewed outside UK you could buy a card sent to UK address to allow one to view these channels from satellite. Are these still available and if so from where and how much and what channels are then released.
Also I have what looks like a card slot for same type of card used with sky and also two which look like the PCMCIA found on some PC’s maybe for the units which can rotate the dish to aim for different satellites?
If all I get is UK History then not worth it but if there are others it may be worth it. Can anyone help?
Eric

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