Satellite Television

There are probably as many channels that are available from the Satellites  that are FTA { free to air } as there are pay TV channels.

Amongst these are a lot of channels that are quite viewable as far as content goes, for instance, Al Jazeera is a 24 hr news channel based in Saudi Arabia and also Russia Today that are transmitted in English.

There is one satellite that is mainly religion having up to 16 channels with religious content. Depending on your needs you can also access quite a lot of content from various European countries in the language of that country. This content will sometimes disappear for a while or it may remain as is for 12 mths or more

It is really quite inexpensive to access these channels with equipment ranging from very cheap {$2-300 } up to very expensive systems {$2-3000 } An average setup similar to what I use myself would cost around  $550 -600 setup & working, which enables you to access different satellites automatically by using a motor drive [commonly called H-H motor] according to your viewing needs.

Access to many satellites  content is available only through Pay TV systems such as Foxtel, Austar,  SelecTV  etc  as this is encoded or scrambled during transmission and requires equipment only available from the respective companies, but there is also quite a lot of content that isn't scrambled which you can access.

Cards are available for SelecTv  [$50] and Optus Aurora [$105] which will allow viewing of these systems

No one is quite sure how many Satellites are up there but the ones that we use in Australia are in the Clarke belt and go by the name & number of the owners such as Optus C1,D1,D2,D3,IS8,IS2 etc. There quite a few more available to us here, some of which  use a transmission band called KU which is distinguished by a very high frequency using dishes up to a metre or so in size, while the other, referred to as C band, uses a lot lower frequency using dishes up to 3 metres in size.

Depending on your requirements and the channels you prefer to watch mainly these dishes can be mounted solidly for 1 satellite or with motors and such that allow the dish to be aimed at other satellites or there are other types of dishes that can be setup to get the signal from 2 -3 satellites without being moved.

Any or all of these systems may be setup at your place but bear in mind that the local councils will sometimes object very strongly to the mounting of large dishes [usually larger than 1 metre]  on your building, in these cases the dish is sometimes placed in the yard at the rear of the building.

If you are thinking of getting a system please give us a ring to see what we can do.