OTHER Possible setup?

[comfortably_numb]

I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question, but I've been out of the FTA game since I lived at my parents' house as a teenager in the late 90's. Back then we had a C-Band dish and I would spend a lot of time cruising the skies looking for wild feeds.

I now have my own house and I have some flexibility on what I can install here. However, just out of sheer curiosity, is there any way to use or otherwise retrofit a DISH 1000.2 twin Eastern Arc setup to receive any kind of FTA stuff with a separate receiver? Is the dish usable with different LNB's? The girlfriend doesn't want me mounting any more "Stuff" on the roof if I don't have to.

 

[KE4EST]

Tell her you have to.

If you retrofit a different LNBF on the dish, yes you can use it to get some things. However, you really need at least a 1 meter dish for serious scanning.
If you are tech savvy and good with working with things you can grab a universal bracket and a linear LNBF and put it on the dish you have to get your feet wet.
Like you said you will have to purchase another receiver made for FTA.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Is there any FTA stuff on Echostar's satellites?

 

[SatPhreak]

Is there any FTA stuff on Echostar's satellites?

Not really. I think there is 1 channel that is really low resolution that sometimes shows a 2 hour block from a channel, then a couple hours from another channel.