Recording free legal satellite TV channels (public domain)

[mkanet]

My friend mentioned to me that his uncle has his satellite dish pointed to a satellite with free unencrypted TV channels (Armenian TV channels). I have no idea what kind of dish and receiver I need and how I can connect it to the PC. Can someone please offer some information about this? Ideally, it would be great to use a digital USB tuner (no analog conversion).

Thanks in advance,
Michael

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by mkanet

My friend mentioned to me that his uncle has his satellite dish pointed to a satellite with free unencrypted TV channels (Armenian TV channels)...... Can someone please offer some information about this? Ideally, it would be great to use a digital USB tuner (no analog conversion).

Thanks in advance,
Michael

Google the phrase "free to air tv". I have a friend with with one of the sat receivers. His is SD but HD receivers are available. I don't know what type of outputs are on the boxes so you'll have to do some digging.

[mikesm]

MKAnet, knowing you, I think you'll want to go the "pure digital" route instead of an STB and analog encoder.

Most of the FTA channels are transmitted in DVB format, and can be recieved in SageTV via a technotrend or other DVB reciever. Getting the guide data to do the right thing is a little more complicated, but if you check the European sagetv forums (like the UK or germany), you'll find lots of threads on people making this work. In the US, the satellite operators are not forced to use an open standard for digital broadcast, so FTA and consumer owned recievers are not nearly as common.

[mkanet]

Cool thanks Mike. Yes, you're right. I dont want to encode in analog; even when recording via component. I'll start asking in the UK/Germany SageTV forum about "free to air tv" DVB usb tuners and sageTV compatible guide data.

Thanks!
-Michael

Originally Posted by mikesm

MKAnet, knowing you, I think you'll want to go the "pure digital" route instead of an STB and analog encoder.

Most of the FTA channels are transmitted in DVB format, and can be recieved in SageTV via a technotrend or other DVB reciever. Getting the guide data to do the right thing is a little more complicated, but if you check the European sagetv forums (like the UK or germany), you'll find lots of threads on people making this work. In the US, the satellite operators are not forced to use an open standard for digital broadcast, so FTA and consumer owned recievers are not nearly as common.

[vikingisson]

I hope you report back how you get setup if you can get an internal sat card going. I've been thinking of doing the same.

The cards and finding enough fta available is a problem in N.A. An STB and motor on the dish is a lot easier and worth playing with in the meantime. Mine has component and s-video out. The component out looks fantastic, I don't yet have a component capture card so I run the component out from the STB and from my sagetv through a Yamaha amp along with digital audio.

For the time being to be able to use guide info and sat recording from sage I use s-video capture and an ir blaster. If a show is worth the extra resolution I'll switch the amp to STB and watch hi def. Guide info for sats on sage is easy for the big name sats but a real challenge for pure fta. What I'm playing with is IPPVR that let's me use the STB directly and then hitting the record function that sends to the sagetv over IP where sage picks up the recording. IPPVR isn't 100% stable yet but the resolution is good.

[pjpjpjpj]

There was a thread about this a while back....

(searching...)

Aha - here it is. I don't know if this helps or not... you may know all of this already...
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27692