Hi Guys,

Just after some advice on setting up free to air satellite. Have been thinking about switching to free to air. Problem is I am moving location as well, and not necessarily a permanent one, so... what is the best way to do this, ie least fuss and least cost short term.

I see a lot of info on free to air sat receivers and the cost is pretty reasonably but getting a dish (or keeping Sky's) I have no clue. I haven't done much of a search on this yet but can anyone recommend any links? Should I install the dish myself? (not a big fan of doing installs), hmm.. anyone using free to air, or have any advice.

hmm.. Sky's site:

“The free-to-air services are available as a separate package for which the customer pays a low weekly fee ($4.46) to rent SKY's digital decoder and satellite dish, but pays no programme subscription to SKY. The other services are available in a variety of packages.”

New membership cost ->. $99 install and compulsory startup package for the first month @ $40 = $122 + ($18 per month). Existing membership cost $80.

$80 bucks a pop and being tied to a nearly $20 a month service is the option with Sky. (rant: pretty lame but hey they're in business..)

Doing it myself opens the possibility to getting a second dish to tune in to another sat(eg panamsat2) but there are only a couple of extra (worthwhile) channels anyway. (for those that only speak English anyway). So lame again.. two dish's = double the install effort and for what, minimal gain.

Hmm.. I see some of the cheaper free to air satellite receivers don't have RF input. That is a worry also... anyone know anything about this?? I would definitely prefer RF input.

I know a lot of you will say “ugh” at just two channels (tv1,tv2, ok.. maoriTV too, and national radio,etc) but considering most of what I watch these days is on tv1 (6pm news,headliners,60 minutes, bbc, etc) except for music (eg Juice,J2,C4) and documentary content (discovery,history channel. Neither of which I watch regularly) it really isn't worthwhile subscribing to Sky. See below for further reason to want sat.

Just on a side note, having a decent uncapped broadband connection is really making the difference, big ups to wired country, If at $65 a month I am a profitable customer to you then wicked but unfortunately I doubt that is probably the case so stink lol, probably get nearly a half of my video content online these days (eg tv series,movies, occasional documentary,etc) but taking into account audio (music, commentary (eg podcasts,etc)) and readable content (eg websites, blogs,etc) it's definitely more worthwhile in terms of value for money and satisfaction.

Granted the net still isn't geared for pushed video/audio content yet (legal or otherwise) but damn if it isn't close...

Actually my sneak goal is to provide TV1,TV2 programming via p2p. Hahah, yes I am dirty little pirate, yes I sometimes feel sorry for my ISP, and yes i'm probably an idiot for announcing my intentions to infringe on copyright in this country but hey i'll be damned if its going to be wasted and I really want to contribute to the concept of world TV. I'm sure other tivo and pvr enthusiasts are thinking along the same lines. Is public TV fair game?

Umm.. anyway. slight diversion from topic.

Hope all ya'll tivoing is going great btw despite the suckage of content as most if not all of you agree with.

TiM