There are a number of competing systems in use. Early adopters used C-band
dishes several feet in diameter to receive analog microwave broadcasts, and later digital microwave broadcasts using the 3.7-4.2
GHz band. Today, although large C-band dishes can still receive some content, the 11.7-12.2 GHz is also used. Ku-band signals can be received using smaller diameter dishes, often as small as , allowing FTA satellite to be picked up from smaller spaces such as apartment balconies (note, however, that these dishes are not quite as small as those commonly used for commercial services such as
Dish Network,
DirecTV,
Bell ExpressVu,
Shaw Direct, etc. Dishes intended for those services may not deliver an adequate signal on Ku-band). The European-developed
DVB-S and
DVB-S2 standards are the most commonly used broadcast methods, with analog transmissions almost completely discontinued as of mid-2014. The most common North American sources for free-to-air DVB
satellite television are: •
NHK World HD on
Intelsat 9 (58°W) •
Retro TV,
Heartland on
AMC 9 (83°W) •
LPB Louisiana
PBS channels LPBHD, LPB2, and LPB3 (Create) on
SES 2 (89°W) •
NASA TV Multi-channel (NASA TV Public-Education, NASA Media, NASA TV UHD) on
Horizons-1 (aka Galaxy 13) (127°W) •
Eternal Word Television Network on
Galaxy 17 (91°W) •
My Family TV,
CGTN on
Galaxy 3C (95°W). • AMGTV and
BYU Television (BYUtv) on
Galaxy 19 (97°W) • English and foreign language broadcasters
RT (TV network),
Ebru TV,
IRINN,
Al Jazeera English and more up-linked by
GlobeCast World TV on
Galaxy 19 (97°W) • Christian broadcasters such as
The Word Network,
Emmanuel TV,
Daystar Television Network,
JCTV,
Trinity Broadcasting Network,
The Church Channel,
3ABN,
The Hope Channel,
Amazing Facts Television, and
God's Learning Channel are broadcast from the
Galaxy 19 (97°W) satellite for
Glorystar and Spiritcast Satellite Systems TV. • Peace TV English and Peace TV Urdu language which are global Islamic channels, available on Galaxy 19 (97°W) •
DoD News on
AMC 1 (103°W) •
Jewish Life Television on
Galaxy 18 (123°W) •
Montana Public Broadcasting Service and other
PBS Satellite Services on
AMC 21 (125°W) •
Classic Arts Showcase on
Galaxy 17 (91°W) and
Eternal Word Television Network HD on
Galaxy 15 (133°W) •
Football,
basketball,
baseball,
soccer, and
ice hockey wildfeeds on various satellites •
InfoWars and
The Alex Jones Show broadcast from
Austin, Texas, and creates free-to-air 24/7 content on Galaxy 16 99°W. Most of these signals are carried by US satellites. There is little or no free Canadian DVB-S content available to users of medium-size dishes, as much of the available Ku-band satellite bandwidth is occupied by
pay-TV operators
Shaw Direct and
Bell Satellite TV, although larger C-band dishes can pick up some content. FTA signals may be scattered across multiple satellites, requiring a motor or multiple
LNBs to receive everything. This differs from Europe, where FTA signals are commonly concentrated on a few specific satellites. Another difference between North American FTA and FTA in most of the rest of the world is that in
North America, very few of the available signals are actually intended for home viewers or other end-users. Instead, they are generally intended for reception by local television stations, cable system headends, or other commercial users. While it is generally thought to be legal for home viewers to view such transmissions as long as they are not encrypted, this means that there are several unique challenges to viewing FTA signals, challenges not present in other areas of the world. Among these are: • No schedule information is provided with most of the signals; therefore, satellite receivers cannot show a proper
electronic program guide (EPG). • Because many of these broadcasts are essentially point-to-point transmissions, the originators often do not follow any international standards when setting various identification fields in the data stream. This causes issues with receivers and software designed for use in other parts of the world, as they may assume that if a channel contains the same ID information as another channel, those are duplicate channels. This may be a valid assumption in other parts of the world, but is almost never valid for North American FTA signals. When such an assumption is made, during a "blind scan" the receiver or software will often fail to correctly insert one or more channels into its database, or it may overwrite previously scanned valid channels (including other channels on the same satellite) with invalid information picked up from another, more recently scanned channel. If the end user does not understand what is happening, they may assume that the receiver cannot receive certain channels or that it is defective, yet if the correct data for those channels can be manually entered, those channels may become receivable. This problem can be mitigated if receivers can be set to ignore channels that appear to be duplicates during a "blind scan", except when such channels are on exactly the same satellite and same transponder frequency (as might occur if the user rescans a previously scanned satellite). • Channels tend to come and go, or change transmission formats, often without any prior notice other than to their intended recipients. This means that a working channel could suddenly disappear without warning, and may need to be rescanned to become receivable again, or it may be gone permanently. • Channels that are currently FTA can become scrambled (
encrypted) with no advance warning. A few channels tend to go back and forth between being "in the clear" (unscrambled) to scrambled at various times, but in most cases, once a channel is scrambled it stays scrambled. • Historically, it has appeared that broadcasters are more likely to scramble their signals when they become aware that home viewers and other "unauthorized" viewers are watching their signals. Therefore, those who know what signals are available may sometimes be reluctant to share that information in open forums. While sites exist that attempt to list currently viewable FTA signals, most of them are incomplete or do not contain current information. Such sites typically rely on reports of changes by viewers, and if viewers are reluctant to report new FTA signals for fear they might disappear, it becomes more of a challenge for such sites to maintain up-to-date listings. • What some would consider the most desirable signals, e.g. feeds from broadcast networks, are primarily only available on C-band, which requires a large dish (usually at least in diameter or more, although a few hobbyists have found it possible to receive some C-band signals using smaller dishes and high quality LNBs). Also some of those signals utilize high-bitrate formats that cannot be received by many older receivers, even if those receivers are capable of receiving digital signals, and such signals may require a larger than usual dish for adequate reception. In many areas, local zoning laws and/or homeowner associations forbid the placement of a large dish, therefore such dishes have fallen out of favor since commercial satellite services became widely available. Therefore, very few people have the capability to receive the C-band broadcasts. Another issue is that properly aiming a C-band dish is not something that a typical end-user would know how to do, since it tends to be a somewhat complex procedure (especially when a moveable dish is used with the intention of tracking the visible satellite arc in order to receive multiple satellites), and many of the installers that knew how to set up and correctly aim a C-band dish have exited the business. • While equipment and
software is becoming available that allows home users to set up a backend system that can deliver received over-the-air
ATSC signals to several frontend systems (for example, a
HDHomeRun,
VBox Home TV Gateway or similar TV tuner, used with
MythTV or
TVHeadEnd), a similar system for receiving FTA signals is considerably more difficult to set up. While PCI/PCIe tuner cards and USB tuners for DVB-S and DVB-S2 are available, there are often issues with drivers, or the cards may simply not be compatible with the backend software in use. Therefore, setting up such a system for FTA satellite reception tends to require considerably more technical knowledge, and a willingness to work through issues, than setting up such a system for receiving terrestrial signals. • Some syndicated programming is being sent as data, similar to the way a
video file might be sent over the
Internet. This means that the programming is not sent in a format that can be viewed in real time, as it is being received. Instead, the data must be captured to a
storage device and decoded for later use. Traditional satellite receivers and even many PC
tuner cards are not capable of receiving these signals, and even if you have a card capable of receiving such signals, you also need special software to find such data streams and when one is found, to extract the data stream and save it. The largest groups of end-users for Ku-band free-to-air signals were initially the ethnic-language communities, as often free ethnic-language programming would be sponsored by Multilingual American Communities and their broadcasters. Depending on language and origin of the individual signals,
North American ethnic-language TV is a mix of
pay-TV, free-to-air and DBS operations. Today, many American broadcasters send a multitude of programming channels in many languages, spanning many new channels, so they can get National support, which ultimately leads to carriage by
cable systems, to additionally support the high costs of broadcasting signals in this way. Nevertheless, free-to-air satellite TV is a viable addition to home video systems, not only for the reception of specialized content but also for use in locations where terrestrial
ATSC over-the-air reception is incomplete and additional channels are desired. ==Oceania==