[mythtv-users] Free-to-Air Satellite Service

[Tom Hayward]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Raymond Boettcher
<raymondboettcher at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I just recently got 2 Satellite Dish's that were originally used for Dish
> Network and was debating on using them to setup Free-to-air Satellite
> Service at my house.  However, it seems that there are a few different
> formats that are used for Satellite.  But according to what I have
> researched it seems I need a DVB-S2 Tuner/Decoder card in order to make this
> work.  I just wanted to know if there was anyone here that is also using
> Free-to-air Satellite Service that has managed to make this work with MythTV
> (in the US).

The Dish dishes are likely too small to be effective with FTA signals.
FTA signals are typically very weak.

> I found a website that talks about this very extensively, but it seems
> they are not from the United States.  They also recommended a few S2 Cards
> that work flawlessly with Linux/MythTV, so I'm considering buying one of
> those tuner cards to expand my MythTV Channel Service.  I just want to make
> sure that a S2 Card is what I should be using in the United States.

Yes, DVB-S2 is what you want.

> I was also looking through Schedules Direct and it doesn't seem that
> Free-to-air is listed as one of the options, however, several other
> satellite providers are listed and one of them looks like one of the
> providers for Free-to-air.  However, I know that Free-to-air does transmit
> EPG Data over their stream and hopefully I'm right in assuming that leaving
> the tuner set to EIT Scan will also work with a Satellite Tuner Card as
> well.

Schedules Direct is working on FTA support. I was setting up equipment
so I could help with an alpha test and ended up not being able to
receive must (see weak signals above).

Tom