The Cost of Pay TV (revisited)

When I started this blog in 2011, I had just dumped DirecTV and put up an antenna. DirecTV was costing me about $70 a month. In my first post on the subject, I noted that this was pretty much average for Pay TV customers. I also calculated that this $70 a month added up to about $9000 over 10 years, and would only continue to rise over time.

So now just a few short years later in 2014 the average cost of pay TV is up to about $85 a month - over $1000 a year, over $10,000 over ten years. In fact, the average price of cable has been increasing at a rate of 6% annually. What is the cable company going to get from you over your lifetime? Let's assume that you start paying cable at age 20 for $85 a month and continue to pay until you are 70, a period of 50 years. If you were able to work out some magical deal with your provider to have no price increase for 50 years, you would spend $51,000 on TV during that time. Add taxes, Set Top Box rentals, and a 6% annual price increase, and your lifetime total for TV alone will approach $100,000.

FTA Satellite, Part 3: The Equipment

In the third installment of our Free To Air (FTA) satellite series, we'll cover the equipment needed to set up a simple, one satellite system that will get you started. We'll assume that you are going to set up your system for Galaxy 19 at 97 degrees. While there is lots of programming on other satellites, Galaxy 19 has over 200 unencrypted channels available (although most are foreign language and/or religious) and it is the logical place to start.

While you can add a motor drive or use multiple LNBs to get more than one satellite, at this point we'll be focused on just a single satellite. For this, you need just 4 things: A dish, 30" or larger with mount, an "LNB" (a Low-Noise Block down converter), a receiver, and some coax cable. I would also suggest an inexpensive satellite finder to make setup much easier. 

Here's the low-down on all that you need:

FTA Satellite, Part 2: Is It For You?

FTA Satellite TV
Part 2

(Read part 1 here)

FTA satellite TV is not for everyone. But is FTA Satellite TV for you? That depends on a number of things.

Consider that you'll need to install a satellite dish at least 30" in diameter to get FTA Ku band programming - that's about 2x the size of the smallest (18") Dish Network or DirecTV dishes. Satellite dishes are covered by the FCC's OTARD regulations, which allow for the installation of satellite dishes up to 1 meter diameter (or any size in Alaska), in an area that you have "exclusive use" of. Basically, you can put a FTA dish anywhere you can put an antenna or DirecTV / Dish Network dish.

If you aren't allowed to have a satellite dish where you live, you can stop right here. Otherwise, read on to see if FTA satellite TV is something you may be interested in.

Using FTA Satellite To Get Free TV

Today, we are going to dabble a bit in the "black arts" of free TV. No, we aren't going to do anything illegal. It's all perfectly legal, the equipment is inexpensive, and the programming is FREE.

Let's get this out of the way first: it's not a replacement for pay TV. No HBO, ESPN, or Showtime here. No HGTV. But there is a lot of content that you would find in a basic pay TV package, and free over the air (OTA) broadcast TV can be found. You can also find some unencrypted premium content as well, albeit most of that is international (non-English) programming.

In this multi-part series of posts, we'll walk you through what free satellite TV is and what is not, what content is available, what it will cost you, and how to set up a simple single satellite system for about $100-$200.

Lets start at the beginning: the 1970's, the dawn of satellite TV.