You think that you have got it rough?

[SatelliteAV]

Currently, I am in St. Kitts (in the Caribbean) on business and found that all residential and commercial satellite dishes must be licensed. The cost is $600 per year. Doesn't matter if you are receiving FTA or pay services ....

The government owns 51% interest in the cable company! Sure not many dishes in use on the island, but sure alot of cable drops!

 

[Davage]

Wow. I'd be finding a way to hide my dishes from sight.. $50/month to get FREE tv is too expensive for me.

 

[Anole]

worse than Microsoft !

I imagine they track 'em when they are sold or imported.
This is worse than handguns.
You'd almost have to build your own in secret, to have one nobody knew about.
Of course, does the customs service keep an eye out for imported LNBs, too?


Maybe an apartment, block, or other form of neighborhood could chip in and share one dish, perhaps with multiple receivers.
Something like the T-90 Toroidal dish, with lots of LNBs and switches...
...Best way for getting the most birds on just the one dish!

But then, we don't know what cable costs...

 

[yahmon]

Now wait a minute, living in the caribbean and paying 600 bucks to watch tv is rough? And how much snow did they get this year so far??? lol

 

[Sadoun]

Wow. That is insane. It is a lot of money to pay for a permit. Like others suggested a whole block/building shared multi-LNBF dish might be the solution.

Then the inspector will show up and count how many LNBFs and charge accordingly . Or maybe a motorized dish will cost more per year than a stationary ...

 

[rdel]

You can always make your dish look like a BIG bird feeder

 

[Tron]

You can always make your dish look like a BIG bird feeder

Really, that's what it is... it feeds the signals from the birds to your receiver

 

[CharredPC]

But how can they tell? (A bit of humor)

Somewhere back in the old postings- probably well over a year ago, maybe even two- someone found an old shallow metal kitchen bowl. Being an FTA nut like the rest of us, they decided to see if they could use it as a reflector to pick up anything. It actually worked! I'm sure it wasn't ideal, but the results were definately viewable. So here's my idea...

You start with hanging up spatulas and and spoons from your porch. You can call it art or homemade windchimes; the results will be the same. You'll be labelled a nutter and no one will really pay attention to you. Next step is to impale collanders and plastic bowls onto sticks in your backyard (probably after waiting a week). Maybe you could even sprinkle bird food on those, so they have a semi-legitimate purpose. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this...

Week three, assemble your metal-kitchen-bowl-dish. FTA will likely be weak, but the overpowered Dish birds would work fine (as long as Dish doesn't report/check to make sure you've paid the local fee when you call to sign up). And if you're 'caught,' what will they try and charge you for owning? A bowl and really bad taste in art decor? They better get alot of arrest warrents ready for cooks with pink flamingos in their yards

 

[updatelee]

a primefocus dish down there would probably be pointing pretty close to straight up, you could make it look like a funny bird bath, without any water, hehe.

we may complain about gov regulation in certain area's, but we got it alot better then some others do.