An Apology to the FTA Community

Status
Please reply by conversation.
I tried twice to PM him to tell him what I think of him but was blocked both times.I'm sure he has an identity here monotoring this site.I want him to know that "a man is known by his deeds".I believe "What goes around,comes around".He is a dictatorial,2-faced horse's .....!!!He can shove his site where his head should be!
 
Hes all about the first amendment until it comes to his wallet.

As I said before, follow the money trail.

Honestly If he just protected his forum from the bots it would be a great site. I have used his site many times as I am sure many of you have.

To me hes not worried about the hobby, hes worried about making sales.

Hes all about the first amendment until what your talking about might hurt his sales and then the first amendment goes out the window, posts are edited and removed and the user is banned.

As I said before... Follow the money trail.
 
I was aware of the bad blood between the 2 sites,first reading a post there that 'he even threatened my life'(Rick's post).The post was about wildfeed posting issue refering to this site.He pretends to be a Christian but doesn't walk the walk.
 
I am really skeptical of the first post in this thread..... The whole story seems a little too convenient and complete.QUOTE]

Whether we know 100% that posting = encrytion... PRUDENCE DEMANDS US TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF SAFETY!!!!!!! This is a genuine no-brainer. DON'T OPENLY POST WHAT'S NOT OPENLY POSTED ALREADY!!! Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but we need to understand that sometimes even our most closely-held opinions are... dare I say it.... WRONG.! We don't even need "proof" in this matter, just the possibility of encryption is enough. I understand the argument of those who say it's OK to openly post, I understand that they don't think this leads to encryption, but these same folks won't post their name, social security number, and birthdate on line because they know very well openly posting these items leads to identity theft. Again, a no-brainer.
ss
I like this anology
 
Trommy,
It's just a simple test to see if they really believe what they say they do: that open posting doesn't = encryption. If they don't really believe open posting = encryption, then they should have no problem posting their personal information online. The concept is the same.
ss
 
All I can do is shake my head. What else can one do? It's like telling a 17 year old they're not as smart as they think they are. All the 17 year old is gonna do is tell you how stupid they think you are and do what they're gonna do: fall flat on their face.
 
Well looks like maybe this post has gottin ricks attention!He has a new thread under off topics.I have been mostly on the sidelines here when it comes to Ricks site.I do post sometimes in his forums and have bought my new Ultra AZBox from him!but dont post feeds in the open.My view on this is that i take the middle of the road! some feeds may be getting removed or scrambled by open viewing and others not.There really seems to be a big feud here between rick and guys.Several other sites while not really advertizing free open feeds freely chat about feeds in the fourums.Hopefully rick and others may see that open feed chats can hurt and change thw way they display feeds.So when im on his site or others i will respect what rules and conditions are set because its not my site!im just a user.
 
I'm generally a fence-sitter on this issue. I've been on the inside/outside of satellite and content distribution since 1977, starting as a chief engineer in the broadcast world and working on the engineering and production side of the entertainment world. I don't do much of either anymore, but I keep in touch.

Whenever the question of posting FTA feeds vs. encryption comes up in forums, there is always extreme polarization and not much in the middle. But that's where I am. I doubt these discussions change many peoples' minds, and I have no expectation that proffering my views would make any real difference. So for the most part I will simply describe a handful of observations concerning the course of these debates. Nevertheless I do feel compelled by my industry background to state there is a generous amount of naiveté by purveyors of both extremes. I have seen very little of what is posted having anything much to do with reality.

To complete my full disclosure, I am a member of both SatGuy's and Rick's forums. I mostly joined to further the exchange of advanced technical know-how. I sometimes get good ideas and inspiration from others, and I hope to return these favors by offering mine. I do post feeds at Rick's, but I'm not terribly prolific. I've also considered joining WUT here, but I haven't taken the step. Enough preamble.

1. There is a lot of hypocrisy about keeping our FTA dream alive.

I believe most of us are in complete denial of a little secret - FTA and 4DTV are dying. Many of the companies that built the equipment I use have been out of business a long time. FTA-friendly companies are closing down and the distribution network is awfully thin. I've tried to order stuff from the few stores left in North America, but it's usually the same story: out-of-stock or we're not carrying that anymore. I can still get interesting equipment by importing it from Europe and Asia, but this is painful, costly and risky. I expect many if not most folks participating in FTA have been there a long time, and we're getting up in our years. Are we ourselves accelerating the demise of FTA?

While I've known for decades how to do the technical side of FTA, I never had the motivation until about three years ago. I had just revamped my state-of-the-art home theater systems, and was frustrated with the dearth of appealing and high-quality content. Rick's forum catalyzed me into putting up 15 dishes and a complex infrastructure because there was material posted that made it worth it. Since then I've persuaded a number of others to pursue FTA. None of them would have bothered without seeing what was available beforehand. Rick's forum filled that need, not SatGuys.

The second newbie need is help and guidance. Hardly any of the people I pointed at FTA were even casual acquaintances of mine, so I recommended they head over to SatGuys. From my perspective at the time there were a lot of old-hands committed to helping people to get started. What floored me is nearly every one of these newbies tried, got frustrated and gave up. When I looked from their perspectives, this made some sense. Their posts were sometimes ignored, given flippant responses, told to read a bunch of threads (not all of which were relevant), given many different opinions (some of which were dead wrong technically) and followed by arguments that degenerated completely off-topic. Looking back, I have myself been guilty of similar transgressions.

I was able to 'save' some of these newbies by personal intervention, but I've since realized forums like SatGuys appear to the outside to be run by insiders with a secret handshake. This keeps fresh blood out of FTA and ultimately hurts the cause.

2. There are arbitrary distinctions of what are acceptable open feeds to post.

Satellite Guys has 'TheList' and of course there is Lyngsat. I am not privy to the decisions of which feeds are allowed on either, or which ones are held back. Both have listed channels that were previously unencrypted and are now encrypted and vice versa. What makes these feeds different?

I don't think many if any members of WUT would be surprised that there are compelling technical reasons for temporarily turning off encryption from time-to-time. These are often predictable, and during my tenure, once the technical reason for turning off encryption goes away, the encryption is very quickly turned back on. Posting these feeds in the open does nothing to change the technical reasons.

There are many non-technical reasons why feeds are not encrypted. Some are quite obvious, some are benign and some are borderline sinister. This is the tricky ground because if we as feed-hunters do not know the reason, there is the chance that by openly posting a feed it may later become encrypted. I generally try to confine my feed posting to those where I have some knowledge of the reasons for non-encryption and a reasonable expectation that this will not be changed by my posting. I can certainly be wrong, but I expect many open posters do not care.

3. Can we really protect open feed posts?

It is not obvious to me that making forums 'bot-proof' or requiring a simple registration provides any real protection from minimally motivated visitors. I would nearly say the same for WUT. All of these methods will disrupt the casual web search, but as there are very, very few sites that provide feed information, anyone on the uplink side who wants to know what we know can easily focus their efforts. The WUT vetting process might keep a 'bad guy' out a bit longer, but if someone on the uplink side wanted to penetrate WUT, they could likely gain an accelerated entry by carefully dribbling out their knowledge and inside information. It would only take one slip of this bastion to confound the entire effort, and for all we know this may have already happened. WUT could be a source for feeds that will become encrypted.

4. FTA technologies we want may become the real dilemma.

Who here doesn't want a better blindscanner? These and other forums are filled with discussions about the speed and accuracy of this function on the latest receivers, spectrum analyzers, channel editors, etc. If this technology becomes too good, it will no longer take something like Rick's forum to scare the living daylights out of those trying to protect open feeds. One person with a little web background would be enough. The technology is already there. About a year ago I started playing with a number of improvements to blindscanning, as some here may remember. I built a rudimentary system in January, but had to put it aside because of other commitments. I've worked on it recently, and am now in a quandary. I am very nervous about releasing any part of this work. The potential for irresponsible use is very high and we might all suffer. Of course if I don't do it someone else will.

5. I don't see dramatic differences in the 'money trails' between the forum sites.

Maybe I just don't get it. This topic very much concerns some people, but not me. Running websites costs money, and we can expect the web will evolve dramatically over the coming decade as businesses try to recoup their costs and make a business case for it. Rick runs a business and has a forum. Scott has a forum partially supported by businesses. Sadoun used to be a supporter of SatGuys, runs a business and has a forum. The motivations for running each forum may be completely different, but they share some practicalities. Is any of this shocking or even a big deal? While this doesn't bother me in the slightest, I see a much higher percentage of commercially-oriented posts (from gold sponsors) at SatGuys than at Rick's or Sadoun's. I could say ominous things about these money trails, but this looks to me to simply be capitalism in action.
 
Pendragon you are missing the point of this entire thread. Go back and read post #1 again.

You can't pretend it didn't happen. Thats what Rick is doing... its business as usual for him. Take off the blinders. It is real and it is happening.

In our private feed section there are LOTS of posts about this happening again and again and again. Just take a look at what happened to the NASCAR feeds because of ONE JACKASS.

By Rick not requiring a log in to view the feeds is the issue. Other then that I don't have a problem with his website and as I said before I like his site. Just put a login so the bots can index and report that stuff. Is that to much to ask?

By him refusing to do that it proves to me that Rick does not give two sheets about the hobby. (My opinon of course)

I talk to a lot of guys that run uplink and work for the networks and when this issue comes up a few times a year the same site comes up to blame from everyone I talk to and you know what site that is?? Yup you guessed it... Rick's.

The old expression loose lips sinks ships still hold today, and this thread proves it. its just a shame some folks don't get it.
 
Ricks home page

My friends I dont post feeds but I dont like the bleame of most about Ricks page .Rick are one good man only have different view about feeds and us and canada are democratic countries so if you dont agree go to Nort corea.So I like satellite guys very good site and good pepolle but Rick are one good man to only different view about feeds.
 
Let me ask you this...

What harm would it do to have Rick make it so that only people logged into his site view the feeds? Its just a few mouse clicks for him.

We all want to watch the same feeds, by doing this is a solution for all of us.

Until he does that then it is my opinion that Rick Caylor is killing this hobby.
 
What harm would it do to have Rick make it so that only people logged into his site view the feeds? Its just a few mouse clicks for him.

We don't have to agree on this point, but now you are not reading my post. Requiring a registration and a login is not going to prevent anyone from reading posts on open feeds if they want. It takes a little more effort, but this is protection only by degree and not as an absolute. I could cook up a bot in a few minutes to get around this.
 
Nobody gives a rat's butt about how websites are supported, the issue is: should feeds or other content not shown on "The List" or Lyngsat be openly posted: that's the issue. Connect the dots: if content is openly posted, is it possible for the provider to find out and encrypt it? If it is possible, then why would you openly post it? The real reason many post what would be better kept "inside" is the feeling of pride they get by showing the world they know something no one else knew, and now look at how important I am. You can holler about free speech all you want. No one here is denying anyone's free speech by requiring a simple log-in to WUT to post or view. As for all us "naive" folks here who aren't quite as bright as some self-proclaimed experts, since FTA has been declared as dying, why don't we all just give up, close the forum down and find another hobby? Pardon this poor naive FTAer if I enjoy FTA as long as I can, and protect it and prolong it as long as I can until it does die, which will come sooner than it should have at the hands of people who can't keep their mouths shut for the good of the hobby.
ss
 
How would an uplinker not expect unencrypted signals not to be discovered ?.... I just dont get it! I do not need ricks, sat guy's or lyngsat to find fta chans. The instruction manual that came with my fortec lifetime ultra is all I need.
 
FTA is such a small part of what we here in north america use to watch tv.I just dont understand why broadcasters would go out of there way to stop such a few from watching.
 
Wow! Thank you for the positive responses! I thought for sure I would be harassed/crapped on etc.

To answer some of the questions posted: Yes I was "Banned" from Rick's forum. I guess if you post feeds there he is your best friend, you pass on info he does not like well bye bye!

I see Rick posted about me on his forum, how thoughtful of him. For someone who keeps talking freedom of speech he has a funny way of showing it. He is full of lies and trying to pass it off as if these feeds were encrypted before my post, which makes no sense as posters thanked me and verified watching them. My post was on Oct 14th. The first time I saw encryption was on Oct 22nd, but I am only here overnight. After talking to a Co-Worker who works during the day he verified that encryption started on Oct 21st, one full week after my dumb post.

To Rick one full week is "overnight" but as we see Rick has a hard time reading a calender or keeping track of days. He also shows his inexperience working in the uplink field. It only takes minutes to setup BISS, those feeds have around 1/2 or even 3 at the most downlinks, setting up BISS would take a whole 5 minutes. We even have taken BISS feeds and don't get the keys sent to us till a hour or so before the uplink. Week is plenty of time to set something up, for the most part no new hardware is needed as most radios (IRDs) have BISS built in.

As for his "source" well let me put it this way, if he has a source why on earth does he not post CBS feeds on his forum? He had about 5% of the feeds this year till I posted them, I checked last year's thread and his forum had about 10%. Yeah I am sure he has a source at CBS who told him why they encrypted. I have a bridge to sell you too! My Source is transmissions at TV-City in Hollywood, where they actually uplink the feeds. They flat out told me Rick's Satellite Board. They claim that place is full of "piracy" (To TV networks any unauthorized viewership is considered piracy) I don't agree with it but that is how they feel. But trust me they know about the place.

If any staff members have any doubts I will be more then happy to provide the phone number for TV City Transmissions. But since that # is private I will not post it nor give it out unless you are staff. I don't even recommend calling them, in fact they might not tell you anything as you are not a TV station that does business with them (Where I work does)

But damn it, I don't like people trying to play off that I am a lair and a trouble maker. I assure you I will defend myself! There is only one guy who is full of baloney in this in and it is not me!

Thank you to SatelliteGuys for allowing me to post this, and once again I am sorry for any FTA viewers who lost feeds because of my actions. That is all I really wanted to say, sorry for making such a big deal out of this. Thanks again for allowing me to defend myself since the "Free Speech" site does not allow it.
 
Last edited:
Quite interesting posts guys. Well I sum up the fact that Rick still has his head in the clouds...nothing new. I think FTA will be around for another 10-15 years maybe...with less and less to watch. Fiber may be the ultimate death of free tv as we know it. I expect to see OTA go away someday too. Posting feeds in the open doesn't help as I see it. If someone disagrees fine, but why take the chance. With a decent blindscanning receiver why does anyone really need Rick's anyway. Half the fun is finding stuff on your own. We should do all we can to keep this wonderful hobby going, not cause it's demise. BTW Trommy, notice your post at Ricks went away real fast too....censorship at its finest. Thanks to Scott and Ice etc..for letting folks here express their opinions here. Blind
 
Wow! Thank you for the positive responses! I thought for sure I would be harassed/crapped on etc.<snip>

Our pleasure. Always nice to see a voice of sanity. And the site owners, and we users here at this site, don't do the censorship thing, only thing that gets ya banned here is hacking or excessive profanity....

And, as a personal note, if you're ever in the New Orleans area, shoot me a PM. Cold frosty beverages of your choice are on ME. :clap:clap

Oh, and hang around if ya wish. It gets real interesting here sometimes! :D
 
Status
Please reply by conversation.

Free Shipping?

Well this is odd

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 3)