FTA Satellite... school me on what's going on these days

Repooc

Well-known member
Hey folks,

Looking to explore some cheaper TV options these days... I've been running my OTA HD antenna setup for about 2 years now, and these basic channels are starting to get a bit boring now (I can't complain too much because it's free).

Anyways, a few years ago, I used to be pretty heavy into the FTA satellite scene with BEV and Dish Network. Times were pretty good until they finally locked it down and finding sources for "fixes"/cracks were few and far between... until they ceased altogether. Heck, when times were really good, you could head to your nearest flea-market to pick up a receiver & dish and you were good to go!

I'm hearing chatter these days that FTA may be available once again, and it has finally been cracked. All the flea-market guys have since disappeared, so finding reliable resources is pretty slim. A search on Google pulls up a million different sites trying to sell you garbage.... too much to filter through.

Does anyone have any solid info on what the current status of FTA is these days? Or perhaps can recommended a good/reliable forum to do some reading/research?

Thanks for your help,
 
from what I know only IKS works. I haven't heard of FTA working again. Humm... something too look into I guess.
 
Years and years ago we used to have the good one with cards that rarely ever went down. Used to last something like 6-12 months at a time before the card needed an update.
 
^^ And after cards came receivers that would get updated through a USB stick and towards the end receivers that were connected to the 'net and would update automatically.

i switched to torrents when FTA went down, and to be honest, i like it better. Satellite signals were compressed so badly the image was garbage, i get movies before PPV gets it. its a pretty good substitute and having the 46" LCD as second monitor it allows me to watch without any streaming or moving to a TV box.
 
Yeah, streaming is a better choice these days. No commercials either :cool:
 
Oh for sure, torrenting and streaming is definitely a HUGE part of my home media setup (I built a 4 terabyte home server for hosting all my movies/music/pics, and can stream to any LCD/anywhere in my home).

However, being on OTA HD, I'm really missing the specialty cable channels that were once found on FTA. Heck, even catching a good PPV boxing/MMA fight .... and I'm not talking the ethnic (asian, south asian) stuff, as I only speak English.

Doing a bit more research, looks like there's a store called Dr. Sat out in Oakville that may be specializing in this stuff. Unfortunately, he's on the complete opposite side of the GTA. I'll give him a call.

Thanks everyone for your input thus far.
 
@twinn: Thanks for the links, those will certainly help if I'm ever away from and need some entertainment.

OK, well I've been doing A LOT of reading since posting this last night, and it looks like IKS (Internet Key Sharing) is the way to go for FTA these days. I called up Dr. Sat (as mentioned above) to see if they can help out, but they were absolutely NO help whatsoever.... some Chinese lady answered and said "we no do that, because illegal".

Not to offend my Asian bretheren.... I understand that there's a whole world of FREE ethnic FTA channels, but this is NOT what I need. I'm looking for a setup capable of getting BEV and DN signals.

So buying the hardware looks to be the easiest part, it looks like the Nfusion HDPVR Nuvenio is the way to go and is capable of IKS
http://www.onesat.ca/Nfusion-HD-PVR...Shipping-p/nfusion-hd-nuvenio-pvr-iks-fta.htm

The hard part now is finding someone who is willing to share their "source" for getting their key subscription. Apparently there's a nominal subscription fee to be hooked up to private server these days, which I have no problem with. Anything would be cheaper the Robbers or bHell.

Understanding the nature of this, please feel free to contact me via PM, if you have any information you can provide (both hardware in IKS private server subscription).

Cheers,
 
Well, I just came back from the Pickering Flea Market....

A couple years ago, everyone and their mom was selling FTA Satellite gear there.... today: NOT A SINGLE PERSON. I went to every booth and no luck.

It seems like FTA (especially this IKS stuff) has gone completely underground. I'm hoping someone from this forum can help me out.

Thanks,
 
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back in the day FTA was not illegal, in the sense that the channels you captured were american and with no infrastructure here, the american stations could not bill you. Not your fault that the satellite signal is hitting your house.

obviously IKS is illegal because someone has to share it with you....and i'm sure after N3 got introduced and screwed it all up, they are trying to keep it as underground as possible to attract as less attentions as possible.
 
try some of the fta irc channels

Wow... IRC eh? people still use IRC?!?! (I haven't used mIRC in many years) Figures... anything shady, and IRC is usually a sure bet for results. LOL. I'll give that a shot then Any channels recommended? (I used to be most familiar with undernet server)

@Red_Linder740: you definitely speak the truth... this scene has definitely gone top secret from what I can tell so far
 
Wow... IRC eh? people still use IRC?!?! (I haven't used mIRC in many years) Figures... anything shady, and IRC is usually a sure bet for results. LOL. I'll give that a shot then Any channels recommended? (I used to be most familiar with undernet server)

@Red_Linder740: you definitely speak the truth... this scene has definitely gone top secret from what I can tell so far

i've since stopped frequenting but the best seemed to be on less popular servers, it's been a few years so i couldn't direct you
 
^^ And after cards came receivers that would get updated through a USB stick and towards the end receivers that were connected to the 'net and would update automatically.

i switched to torrents when FTA went down, and to be honest, i like it better. Satellite signals were compressed so badly the image was garbage, i get movies before PPV gets it. its a pretty good substitute and having the 46" LCD as second monitor it allows me to watch without any streaming or moving to a TV box.
Actually that is not true about compression. Satellite HD from Bell and Dish were both completely uncompressed MPEG2 (either 1080i or 720p). Satellite HD was by far the best HD you can get anywhere until BluRay and HD-DVD came about. Standard definition was also uncompressed 480p, but the quality of the actual feed was usually garbage. HD was always best. It's cable that uses lossy compression and HD quality is degraded horribly. Used to hate watching hockey on cable because hockey sticks would look like a staircase.

I've stopped following the scene when Nagra3 came out on Dish. I never trusted IKS and still wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. As far as I know there is no progress being made on Nagra3 that is public. FTA manufacturers every month say the fix is coming out this month for sure. Then it repeats next month. Basically a scam to try and drive suckers to buy them.

I've started using NetFlix until I watched everything on there because Canadian one has a very very very limited selection compared to US. I've also been torrenting and briefly using newsgroups. Newsgroups were more trouble then they are worth and you can't get good access for free. I'd recommend torrents. Any TV shows worth watching are available. EZTV and VTV are well known groups for TV show releases so as long as you grab torrents released by those 2 you will be good.
 
i've since stopped frequenting but the best seemed to be on less popular servers, it's been a few years so i couldn't direct you
EFnet is where most main stream sketchiness happens on IRC. The rest are more underground and private but I always found EFnet is a good place to start and then you need to find the right people to invite you to the right places.
 
back in the day FTA was not illegal, in the sense that the channels you captured were american and with no infrastructure here, the american stations could not bill you. Not your fault that the satellite signal is hitting your house.

obviously IKS is illegal because someone has to share it with you....and i'm sure after N3 got introduced and screwed it all up, they are trying to keep it as underground as possible to attract as less attentions as possible.
FTA = free to air. Except for NASA and some advertisisements there were never any FTA channels in North America. All other channels were not FTA and watching them was and is illegal.
Those channels were heavily encrypted. The providers had every infrastructure to bill people and they could and did people who subscribed legally. Satellite signal hitting your house was useless without some illegal software that would break proprietary encryption and allow to watch paid content for free. It was never even a gray area, it was always illegal.
 
It has not gone top secret. It's just that most places have gone bye bye as there is no real fix. IKS works but you have to connect to another comp. Many companies providing a server have been busted and IP addy's given the the cops. Not something most are willing to do.

The best way to get it right now is find a friend(s) in the US who is willing to share with you. You can set up your own private network. Of course someone has to pay for the sub but that cost can be split up amoungst the number of people joining. You will also not get any PPV unless you pay for them. Again these can be bought and the cost divided between all who are connected.
 
Actually that is not true about compression. Satellite HD from Bell and Dish were both completely uncompressed MPEG2 (either 1080i or 720p). Satellite HD was by far the best HD you can get anywhere until BluRay and HD-DVD came about. Standard definition was also uncompressed 480p, but the quality of the actual feed was usually garbage. HD was always best. It's cable that uses lossy compression and HD quality is degraded horribly. Used to hate watching hockey on cable because hockey sticks would look like a staircase.

That is wrong in so many levels...

All digital feeds (HD and SD) are compressed. It's impossible to send video signal on satellite uncompressed. Uncompressed HD video at 60fps is about 3gb/s. Even on BluRay it's compressed. The only feed that is not compressed is analog.

The compressing on Satellite varies from channel to channel but on a regular network it's about 8mb/s. By comparison, HD from OTA is about 13 to 19.39 mb/s . On BluRay it's about 20 to 50 mb/s (40mb/s maximum for video)
 
That is wrong in so many levels...

All digital feeds (HD and SD) are compressed. It's impossible to send video signal on satellite uncompressed. Uncompressed HD video at 60fps is about 3gb/s. Even on BluRay it's compressed. The only feed that is not compressed is analog.

The compressing on Satellite varies from channel to channel but on a regular network it's about 8mb/s. By comparison, HD from OTA is about 13 to 19.39 mb/s . On BluRay it's about 20 to 50 mb/s (40mb/s maximum for video)
Saying that "Uncompressed HD video at 60fps is about 3gb/s" does not make any sense without context. Since video data has to be digitized you have to specify what encoding and compression is used (and if it is lossless or lossy), the resolution, the bitrate and interlaced vs. progressive. By itself that number is completely meaningless.

In a format like MPEG2 the quality is determined primarily by the resolution and bitrate. Once thing I can tell you for sure if that CBC-HD had the same bitrate over satellite as they did OTA because I had both the DVB-S card and ATSC tuner card for my PC and compared both to see which one was better. They were in every way identical (the video anyways, I never looked at audio). 1080i@60fps and same birtare (can't for the life of my remember what it was since it was a few years ago now).

It's definitely not BluRay quality, but it was the completely equivalent to OTA HD quality. More so, Cable HD even on DOCSIS 3.0 (which most were not using back in the Nagra2 days, Rogers was DOCSIS 2.0) you get 160mpbs (40mbps with DOCSIS 2.0) divided between 50 to several 100 customers. That made effective bitrate of the video so small it could barely pass for HD anymore.

Edit: The part about analog is the only feed being uncompressed is completely wrong. At that point you are just confusing compression with encoding. You can encode any analog signal into digital in a way where if decoded back to analog you will get exact same signal. Compression is taking original data and reducing it's size. There is also such a thing as lossless compression, where when uncompressed the result is identical to the original prior to compression.
 
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Saying that "Uncompressed HD video at 60fps is about 3gb/s" blah blah blah

You're the one who doesn't get it. You can have digital video without compression... just not for broadcast. Look it up...

Still think Satellite TV is uncompressed?

and NO, you can't take an analog singal, compress it for broadcast then return it to analog without losing anything. There is such a think as lossless compression but Mpeg2 is FAR FROM IT.

Maybe back in the DVB-S days CBC might had the some bitrate as OTA but that's not the case today.

Also, broadcast TV is 1080i@30fps (30 frame per second/ 60 fields per second) .. not 1080i@60fps as you say.
 

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