New FTA service with 20 english channels

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Who's gonna guarentee a certain amount of sales to make it profitable?Also,the more components (=features) you have in any electronic product,the more heat is generated.I'm guessing that may have a bearing on the number of features available.

If the receivers are pretty much the same and just names added, then it is the quanity purchased that will dictate price and profitability. As for the features... several years ago in a magazine it was mentioned that in DVD players the components and boards are the same in the lower end models as the high end. As for features on the players it was basically a matter of enabling the components to do more features on the deluxe models without very many assembly line changes. I am not sure if this applies to receivers but heat could be a problem too.
 
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Thanks Dan.I'm certainly no electronic expert but I do have an electrical(as opposed to electronic) background.A god example:I purchased a used computer and it worked good for,I think,about 20 min and then started shutting off.After several times of this I opened it up and found the fan completely plugged with dust,completely!I used a 1" paint brush to unclog it and it worked fine;I still have it.Same with Diceq switches.Thats why some stb's have heatsinks on modules and some don't.Maybe someone with an engineering background will clarify it better.
 
Depends on which one you are talking about. I was lead to believe that the AZBoxes aren't great at blindscan though...the ones that have it... They are the closest thing to an all in one box solution however, and have been rewarded with sales.
 
Depends on which one you are talking about. I was lead to believe that the AZBoxes aren't great at blindscan though...the ones that have it... They are the closest thing to an all in one box solution however, and have been rewarded with sales.

I may yet buy an AZbox, but was hoping for something just slightly better. The few issues with the AZ are well known, not sure if they should be considered a mountain or a molehill. Guess I'll wait a few months longer. Brian ???
 
Yeah, I getting the feeling (or fear) that a better receiver will come out sometime soon...or perhaps just more choices.
 
FreeDBS in a different light!

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]A thread from Legal Free to A..in which a Mr Durnnett really sheds some light.Here's a link:
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http://legalfreetoair.com/index.php?topic=2867.0
If this doesn't take you directly there,click the link and go to page 2 of the "FreeDBS" thread.
 
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I also got a link to Frid@ FTA.The guy is intelligent enough in a narrow minder way.He has a filthy mouth and wears a pot on his head.I think it's too tight.Hes says a lot of BS.BS because he doesn't back it up."Can't name names","take my word for it".He's an 'expert' on finding info about the officers at FreeDBS and if one had a failed business venture then 'it was a scam'.He's an egotistical joke with a small following of 'yes men'.Rick has his members fooled but this guy is so obvious.My opinion only.
 
This is a welcome piece of info from another site:

Quote from: trommy on Yesterday at 05:57:01
[Quote from: professorbolin on Yesterday at 04:41:52
"could Freedbs.org make money by using all FTA channels from c-band and pass them thru a couple transponders on to a KU band where a single small dish would receive them, add their own paid advertising/commercials, and turn a profit??
Then work on their other projects as funding/profit arrived?"]


trommw:'Good idea but I don't think they could substitute their own commercials legally.'

(This is the follow up to the first question):

Philanna1 'This is a little old and is just some guys opinion, but when I saw it come up again some place else, I thought it would be a nice little bit of fuel for this discussion.' :

"C/P
Cablevision, stuck in an awful retransmission consent battle with Fox, issued the most amazing press release yesterday. It said that the 1976 Copyright Act allows any “governmental body, or other non-profit organization” to retransmit over-the-air (OTA) signals so long as it gains no commercial advantage and charges only enough to cover operating expenses.

Now this opinion is coming from a cable TV company. At this week’s earnings call, another cable giant, Comcast, said that it’s already losing subscribers to local OTA TV. What would happen to Cablevision if its subscribers had free access to lots of out-of-market OTA channels? When a company volunteers the idea that non-profits could legally take away its customers, you have to believe it, don’t you?

Fox doesn’t believe it. Fox quickly issued a statement that “It is alarming that Cablevision would put non-profits and governmental bodies at risk by encouraging them to violate the Copyright Act in order to gain a commercial advantage.” (That’s according to a story by Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton.)

I am not a lawyer, and I know just enough about intellectual property to be dangerous. (In other words, don’t try any of this without consulting your own lawyers!) But for the rest of this post, let’s all pretend that what Cablevision said is true. Maybe it is.

Here is the cornerstone of what could be a great FTA satellite TV service. Imagine a non-profit FTA broadcasting organization; I’ll call it SatFreeTV.org. It could use dozens of volunteers with OTA antennas to send channels from all over the country to an uplink center via the internet. The uplink would combine a dozen or two of these channels and bounce them off a dedicated transponder. Anyone with an FTA dish would have access to SatFreeTV’s slate of channels, all for free. It would be just like FTA’s glory days with all of those Equity channels, except better.

Volunteers don’t get paid, and they might be able to pick up their own internet expenses, but satellite space definitely isn’t free. SatFreeTV would have to pay roughly $150,000 per year per transponder. Where would the money come from? As a qualified, educational non-profit, SatFreeTV could attract some grants from foundations, donations from FTA equipment vendors, and maybe even free services from uplink centers. Perhaps with a cluster of attractive channels in place, SatFreeTV could charge some religious channels enough rent to help pay the transponder bill.

The other volunteers that SatFreeTV would need are lawyers. Regardless of whether it’s legal, SatFreeTV would attract the same kind of lawsuits as ivi.tv and FilmOn. There wouldn’t be any investors to foot the legal bill in the hope of a big payoff down the road. Maybe SatFreeTV could give the Electronic Freedom Foundation a channel in exchange for continuing legal services.

Then there’s Congress. If SatFreeTV became sufficiently popular, I would expect sports leagues to go to Congress and testify that they were going to have to remove all games from free TV. Who is going to pay for an out-of-market sports package if they can get all the games elsewhere for free? Would Congress paper over that old Copyright Act exemption? Or would the collected voices of SatFreeTV viewers convince it to leave it alone? Since this is our daydream, we’re free to hope for the best.

I’ve often thought that FTA needs a non-profit organization. This technology is already a great way to watch dozens of channels that aren’t available anywhere else. If we could also add dozens of OTA channels, then we’d hit the jackpot."

Note:This is just one person's opinion.
 
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Comcast, said that it’s already losing subscribers to local OTA TV
Did they ever ask those cancelling service the simple question "why?" Answers probably run like this: crappy picture quality, Too expensive for what is actually watched, Advances in technology has always ended up obsoleting something. Privately owned cars and planes obsoleted the cross country passenger trains (now only kept alive by taxpayer dollars) Maybe it's time for cable, dish, and dtv to alter their business's (model) Compared to those three, OTA rules for pic quality and dependability of service. A friend purchased a new HDTV and asked why the picture looks so bad, I said "well, you're on a pizza dish, that's why" He said, "But I bought the HD package." ----- A few day later, we did a sat / OTA comparison. He cancelled the HD package, and told them why.
Wow, just realized that we're getting a bit off track of the thread. I hope for the best with the free FTA endeavor, when it happens, it'll happen. If nothing comes of it, I hope they let the FTA community know why.
 
NOT TRYING TO BE SARCASTIC BUT...

No sarcasm intended,but if you read through the forum,particularily this thread,you will know as much as anyone when it will start.(in print this sounds' ' sarcastic' but it's not intended to.)I agree,it's gotten a little off topic.:)
 
Reply from Mark Mauk

I was hoping for a more substancial response but it does seem that they are undeterred.I got this response from Mark Mauk within 1hr:

"Thanks for support, we are still working on this and can not release news on everything that we are doing. Yes there are many obstacles. Thanks.."

As you can see they know they can't respond to the countless negative postings.And it is none of our business!
 
This thread was started on 1-12-2010. When it hits the year mark on 1-12-2011, let's have a mod lock it. It will probably still be the same by then.... speculation without substance. It will definitely be a mercy killing. I think I see the horse's rotting ribcage lying over there, meatless, and STILL being beaten! :eek:
 
This thread was started on 1-12-2010. When it hits the year mark on 1-12-2011, let's have a mod lock it. It will probably still be the same by then.... speculation without substance. It will definitely be a mercy killing. I think I see the horse's rotting ribcage lying over there, meatless, and STILL being beaten! :eek:

I agree.
 
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