Need Some Basic Advice

[stevo44]

I am extremely new to this. I live in a very poor TV reception area and so am interested in setting up satallite tv. I have friends all telling me different ways to achieve this but most sound like they are probably illegal. Can someone give me advice on the basic legalities and how I can legally setup my own satallite tv - I'm really only interested in the free to air stuff.

[networker]

do u want it the hard way (legal) or the easy way(illegal)?

[SIadmin]

Networker - Don't push it.
stevo44 has already said he is not interested in illegal setups, aside that, FTA reception is not illegal...

[stevo44]

I have a couple of friends who have purchased a Humax and a dish and got a card burnt for about $50. My father in law paid an installer to do the lot for him and didn't get much change from $2k - which when you look at the prices of the various receiving equipment seems excessive.

[Al Bundy]

Originally posted by stevo44
I have a couple of friends who have purchased a Humax and a dish and got a card burnt for about $50. My father in law paid an installer to do the lot for him and didn't get much change from $2k - which when you look at the prices of the various receiving equipment seems excessive.

OOhhh yeah, just a Tad

Stevo44 if your in a poor television reception area, you can set yourself up with a receiver and dish & LNB and get an Optus Aurora Card, cards are about $100 - $150, and its all legal, of course depending what channels you can't get terrestrially will make a difference as to what you will get from Sat, but after that with a bit of reading you will find a way to open the rest of the Aurora channels up, technically illegal, but I don't think anyone is going to complain.

[SIadmin]

Bare in mind that to get channels from "all over the world" will probably require you spend that $2k. For that you would get a decent sized, motorized, C-Band dish (2.5m+), receiver & motor controller and full installation.
Of course if your FiL paid $2k for the same type of system that your mates got, then....

[stevo44]

Thanks for the info - where is this stuff available from. Do I buy it all from a place like hotchips or do I have to go to some government authority to get the card?

[SIadmin]

Maybe some clarification is need here.
Because the Aurora platform is encrypted it cannot be classed as FTA. It has been (wrongly) put in the FTA catergory because of the channels offered on it (ABC SBS Imarja, etc.) but it is still not FTA.

True FTA is when received signals can be viewed on a satellite receiver without having to decrypt them.
Pay a visit to Lyngsat - http://www.lyngsat.com/asia.shtml and have a look at the following satellites:
Intelsat701, PAS2, PAS8, OptusB1, OptusB3, PalapaC2, Asiasat3S, Asiasat2, Insat2E and Thaicom3.
They are the main satellites viewable from Australia - when you look through the transponder list for each sat you will see channels marked in yellow - they are the FTA channels and are viewable with a standard digital receiver such as the Humax, eMtech, Topfield models (but not Pay boxes), without the use of a card or subscription.
Looking at the page for each of the satellites listed above (except OptusB1 and OptusB3) the first block of transponsers listed are the C-Band channels (3700 - 3000) and the motorised $2k system I described above would receive most of them (depending on where you are).
The lower block of listed transponders are the Ku-Band channels (10500(?) - 12750) and require a differant dish system - whether you use seperate dishes, a motorised system or a Toroidal unit depends on what satellite(s) you wish to receive.

To receive Aurora you need a Ku-Band dish pointed at OptusB3 (same sat as PayTV), a receiver capable of decrypting Irdeto1 signals (Humax5410z, etc) and an Aurora smartcard. You can get an Aurora card from a number of satellite dealers and have it enabled (by ringing the supplied Optus activation number) to view ABC, SBS, a few other odd TV channels and some radio channels, BUT, you cannot get enabled any commercial channels unless you can prove that you are in area which receives little, or no, commercial TV signals - a report by a reputable antenna technician is required and has to be submitted to Optus for approval by both themselves and the channel(s) you wish to enable.

So the question is do you wish to get the real FTA stuff or the Aurora package?

[stevo44]

OK - so if I just wanted to get the standard commercial stations (like everyone who can get them terestrially - 2, 7, 9, 10, sbs) plus a few odds and ends I need to setup a dish to point at OptusB3 and buy a smartcard and pay to get it enabled? Am I reading this correctly?
So the card allows you to decode the signal, without the cade does the Humax box mentioned pick up the 'clear' signals on the bird?
Also does this mean that if I put this dish on a motorised head then I could use this setup to look at other ku-band birds?
So the answer to your question is I guess I am looking at some kind of aurora package.

[SIadmin]

You buy the Aurora card but you don't have to pay to get it enabled. As I said you can get some commercial channels enabled (not actually 7,9,10) but you have to prove that you cannot get acceptable reception of any commercial channels via your terrestrial system. eg: If raising your antenna 2m and installing an amplifier would produce reasonable pictures you would not qualify - that is why an antenna tech is required for the field test report.
Provided you enter the correct parameters (from the Lyngsat site) into the receiver, all the channels listed will be loaded into it - if any are FTA (or "in the clear") then you will see them.
A motorised system does exactly that. Note that setting up a motorised dish system to track correctly without a decent meter is very difficult, and more so on Ku-Band where the received beam is very small - best to leave the actual alignment to the experts.