Primestar satellite back in 1997-99?

SkyScanner81

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Jun 17, 2021
18
9
Crossville, Tennessee
Question. I had a Primestar dish as a teen from 97-99 and at the time was not a knowledgable fta guy or anything. I used to be into a tape trading/ collecting hobby and would basically record everything I could find on tv. I would always see that other local upn and fox channels would carry some shows I always wanted back then, including rare ones and I have often wondered if I had say a ku band fta type receiver and had connected it to my Primestar dish would I possibly have pulled in these upn and fox channels or their feeds and if anyone remembers what satellite primestar was aimed at. It makes me fantasize how if I new about fta then how many channels from other cities and feeds of say shows like "diffrent strokes" or such I could have recorded. Lol. I know Mr Hollaway on here talks about the old stuff around that period as well, it just seems I wonder since I had Primestar what I could have got had I had a ku receiver and just plugged it in.



Any help. Any old ku band channel and feed listings from 97-99? I know c band had feed listings but what about Ku band?


Thanks!
 
Primestar was I believe on AMC 16 at 85 degrees. Either 83 or 85. You needed a primestar receiver to get/see the programming. You couldn't see it with a FTA receiver. FTA backhauls were on the satellite on other transpondets. Both analog and digital.

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Primestar was I believe on AMC 16 at 85 degrees. Either 83 or 85. You needed a primestar receiver to get/see the programming. You couldn't see it with a FTA receiver. FTA backhauls were on the satellite on other transpondets. Both analog and digital.

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Thats what I meant backhauls. I had primestar service just wonder what kind of ballgames and tv show affiliates and feeds I could have had with a receiver. Whats ironic is the entire time I had a broken c band dish I always worked on to try to get up and I had a receiver. Never once did I think to see what could happen connecting the primestar dish. I had zero knowledge and internet was new.

Lol
 
There were alot of college football and basketball feeds, North Dakota Sioux hockey were the ones I remember the most.

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There were alot of college football and basketball feeds, North Dakota Sioux hockey were the ones I remember the most.

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You could also find plenty of NBC feeds and PBS feeds on there as well, plus several Conus feeds and news feeds (CNN was also there on SBS6, GE3 Ku and GSTAR4).
 
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Plus, the Ku side of Anik E2 (A2) carried StarChoice programming. ExpressVu was also on there as well, but you needed an ExpressVu dish in order to watch their programming (As they scrambled its channels). They moved to a DBS-only sat in 1999 (Nimiq 1).
 
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