PSB said:
Very cool! Almost FTA channels! back 10 years ago, Eurosports, Sky1, MTV....... and many more were FTA.
Those days are gone, Sky is part of Sky and is a pay channel, Eurosport can be found but with German language FTA and MTV is encrypted, except again the German version of MTV.
I remember back in 1983 when i installed my first dish, a 1.8m dish, there was only two sats that broadcasted cable-tv channels to headends in Europe, they were not targeted at DTH households, i could get Filmnet, The Movie Channel, Screensport and a lot more, all FTA.
1 year later they started encrypting as more people found out that you could get free movie channels from a satellite dish.
And not to be forgotten when they started broadcasting CNN Headline News direct feed from USA on Intelsat 27.5W to Europe, now we instead got a boring CNN International or Euro version.
I think the period 1983 to 1985 was the funniest and most interesting period in this area, the U.S had their 10-12 feet C-band dishes and Houston Tracker receivers and the all glory Drake receivers.
Too bad you can't turn back time.