Good Old Days or Good New Days of c-band?

[Lone Cloud]

There is so much written about the old glory days of c-band. They remind us that everything was available via BUD. Although I'm old enough to have been in on the glory days of old. I'm actually kind of recent in the hobby. So I only get to experience the good new days.

With my newly installed Birdview dish, I am getting most of the free programming on everything from 55.5 west to 137 west.

Granted for true FTA, without any subscriptions, nowadays you don't get much in the way of commercial free movies. But there is sports galore and a lot in HD! . There are networks on 99 west, 2 in HD. There is NASCAR in HD, There are some channels considered premium being broadcast in HD ( I don't want to be real specific because the provider might yank the programming if he thought the news was spreading)

There is a hunting channel on a satellite in the 130's, and another on 121 Standard def but still cool.

Fanz TV for the adrenaline types. Tons of religious programming. I could go on.

But right now, the use of the c-band for hidef is growing. about three months ago I had one hidef station on C - ABC on 99 west.
Today I have about fifteen.

I can appreciate the talk about the old days. That's when we drank the most, laughed the hardest and kissed the prettiest girls.

But all of that said, It feels like I am, today, very very well positioned for the new golden age of c-band

 

[tdti1]

I'd say it's better now than ever before, best to keep great feeds to yourself though.

 

[Lone Cloud]

It'd be great to hear from some of the guys who were in on the old and golden days, who still use their big dish today.

What I keep hearing about though, is guys who let it all go back in the 90s in favor of a subscription.

I agree on the "keep it quiet" thing. That said, here we are, getting an absolute ton of great stuff, and not able to tell the world about our good fortune. It's ashame.

If these are the best of times for C-Band, there is no way we could prove it here. The best we can do appears to be hinting at our regular viewing experiences on the BUD

 

[tdti1]

Had my big dish for over 20 years, never made a full switch, tried out pizza and dumped it, nothing bets the pic and free channels, I do have subs on my 4d and love that to.

 

[Radioguy41]

I have my BUD for over 15 years. I gave the pizza pan a try last year and had more technical problems in 18 months with their equipment (3 different receivers for starters) than in all the years with C-band. As soon as my contract ran out the pizza pan was gone. C-band has a better picture by far, less digital compression, and I don't lose the signal every time it rains or snows or gets foggy. I will say this, though, and others may disagree but the C-band analog signal was still the best picture. NO artifacting and NO frizzy edges on lettering. Now that I'm adding FTA I'm looking forward to getting back some of the hunt-and-seek fun of past years.

 

[turbosat]

I agree with ya jeepman, that analog was hard to beat. Growing up between 2 mountains and never having a decent OTA signal made that first analog satellite signal look like heaven! I wish NASA had left their signals alone, those earth-obs from the shuttle were fabulous in analog.
But we are in the digital age now.

 

[tdti1]

I have found many feeds that look better than analog, some feeds come in past good dvd quality if you have the right equipment.

 

[ACRadio]

In the summer of 1979 I was at a friends house whose family built the local cable company. They had a 14 foot "8 Ball" dish with a frame made of redwood and used screen door wire for a reflecting surface. That system had a single polarity horn feed with a 150 degree LNA that ran on 110v AC...it was mounted on a camera tripod. The downconverter was mounted inside the house

The very first satellite signal I saw that day was from HBO...they were showing "The Gumball Rally". I also remember seeing Cinemax and WTBS that day. I realized that I had to know everything I could about this television receive method after living in a rural area with mainly one channel most of my childhood years and carrying TV antennas everywhere. I quickly learned all the parts of the system and in a few months I was working in the infant satellite industry. It wasn't hard to learn having a radio and electronics background.

So many changes have taken place since that time, and I'm sure us "old timers" have a lot of war stories we could tell. Yes, I have a pizza dish sub, but C band is alive and well at my house.

 

[tvropro]

I've had a big dish since 1987. I was going to get one earlier but held off to see what was going on with scrambling. After a few years in the mid 80's with cable and there never ending outages and problems I said enough is enough and took the plunge to c band and never looked back.

I saw my first satellite system in a showroom in 1982. I remember seeing Galaxy 1, Showtime, HBO, MAX, TMC, TNN, TBS etc were all unscrambled. (before any scrambling) I knew in my heart I had to have one some day after that day. I remember sending away for paperwork on a satellite system back in 1979 the cost was $26,000.00

As far as pizza systems goes all it is is cable from the sky, and bad cable at that. I hate them with a passion since Dish & Direct has destroyed what once was the best you can have for tv. They can push the HD lite and say it's great but after seeing the quality of a C band backhaul (analog master) for so many years it pales in comparison.

Digital brings back a lot of the fun although there was nothing like back in the day

 

[Radioguy41]

I have found many feeds that look better than analog, some feeds come in past good dvd quality if you have the right equipment.

You're right about the right equipment but I'm talking about ordinary C-band on 4DTV, not HD and not FTA. My comparison is analog C-band versus DigicipherII C-band. In my opinion the quality of the analog picture was superior to DII. The same comparison can be made for OTA. Sure HD looks great on my SONY but non-HD digital suffers when compared to analog and is absurdly unstable to boot (as is all OTA digital). Just my opinion based on my experiences.

 

[tvropro]

You're right about the right equipment but I'm talking about ordinary C-band on 4DTV, not HD and not FTA. My comparison is analog C-band versus DigicipherII C-band. In my opinion the quality of the analog picture was superior to DII. The same comparison can be made for OTA. Sure HD looks great on my SONY but non-HD digital suffers when compared to analog and is absurdly unstable to boot (as is all OTA digital). Just my opinion based on my experiences.

Analog C band IMO is the best. Although the masters in DC II for HBO, Food Network (Scripps mux) and the Discovery muxes which we can subscribe to. Also masters such as ABC Family, Disney and the USA mux on G1 with Sci Fi, USA and Sleuth which we can't subscribe to are very good for DC II. (non megapipe 4DTV compatible)

The HITS muxes on W5 are okay for the most part. The NPS muxes on G3 are pretty bad in PQ, the flip side of the bad picture is at least NPS is allowing us to have these channels if it wasn't for them they wouldn't be there.

 

[Lone Cloud]

I have a lot to learn

Sure, I'm flush with excitement over the new stations I'm pulling in with my C-band dish. I do maintain that programming will improve even more. But the guys who've been running big dish since the 80's sure know a lot more than I do. It's a pleasure to read their stuff.





Birdview 8.5 foot dish, hh mount modified for pulse positioning. BSC 621-2 universal lnb. Winegard 1 meter dish. Invacom lnb. Sonicview hd8000 receiver - all feeding into a home theater system (Onkyo, Sony) projecting onto a ten foot diagonal screen.

 

[Radioguy41]

Also masters such as ABC Family, Disney and the USA mux on G1 with Sci Fi, USA and Sleuth which we can't subscribe

I'm not sure what you mean about "can't subscribe". Maybe I'm not reading it right but USA, Sci Fi and Sleuth are in the NPS Absolute Digital package. I get all of them.

Larry

 

[turbosat]

Larry I think he means there are sep signals for other customers, like cable co's, that are on satellite digital>but either they aren't marketed to the 4DTV customers, or the 4DTV equipment won't decode the exact transmission format they are in (something called megapipe, I'm not familiar with that as I never bought a 4DTV. Or at least not yet lol)
Some of the channels that NPS is uplinking are apparently of lesser signal quality compared to those other "master" feeds, but are available to home-dish owners.

 

[tvropro]

I'm not sure what you mean about "can't subscribe". Maybe I'm not reading it right but USA, Sci Fi and Sleuth are in the NPS Absolute Digital package. I get all of them.

Larry

USA is being reuplinked from the master on G1 by NPS on G3. Sci-Fi & Sleuth are being reuplinked by HITS on W5. The original first generation signals are 4DTV compatible although NBC Universal will not allow us access. Every once in a while they are ITC. If you ever saw the original masters picture quality you would be blown away. The same goes for ABC Family & Disney on G5. ABC/ESPN/Disney will not let us have access to those signals. Once again those masters look fantastic. They go ITC once in a while also.

There are also megapipe (combo mode) DC II masters up there. The 4DTV will not decode them. You need a DSR 4800 commercial receiver and a commercial subscription to receive them.

 

[Radioguy41]

I knew I was missing something.

 

[Corrado]

I've been with C band for 20+ years now myself, 4DTV since 2002 and FTA since early 2005. I had a friend in the cable company that was their dish maintenance guy. He had a side business in the 80s putting in C band systems. He had a dish on a trailer to let potential clients test things out before buying.

That got me hooked after putting a few in and getting to see how it all worked. My hard work putting in those 48" holes and 200' trenches paid off.

Back in my area in the 80s we had only OTA, cable didn't reach out here until the late 90s.

 

[Lone Cloud]

I enjoy all of the descriptions of the different programming out there, even if I don't understand the lingo.

For me, the fun is in finding the free stuff. I don't feel deprived at all when I look at my friends' guides for Dish Network or Directv. Sure, it'd be nice to have comercial free movies, but I have a good supply of dvds and old videotapes for my movie fixes.

I like finding stuff from Alaska or the Virgin Islands or Newfoundland. I love finding high definition programming.

For now, at least, I'm not interested in subscribing to anything. My FTA receivers get the free stuff from both bands, (C-band unscrambled is far more and better than Ku) and I enjoy finding something new to watch nearly every other day.

It's a fun hobby. There are helpful people in it. With all of the misguided folks out there who want to get rid of their big dishes, right now is a great time for people to jump in for next to nothing, cancel their subscriptions and watch good tv

Peace.



Birdview 8.5 foot dish, hh mount modified for pulse positioning. BSC 621-2 universal lnb. Winegard 1 meter dish. Invacom lnb. Sonicview hd8000 receiver - all feeding into a home theater system (Onkyo, Sony) projecting onto a ten foot diagonal screen.