Beware the zombie satellite

Some bloggers make lots of short posts to quickly reflect whatever they care about at the time. So far, I’ve been collecting thoughts and lumping them together. Would you rather see shorter, more frequent posts? Like it the way it is? Leave a comment, please.

* The mainstream media is slowly coming around to reporting the odd problem that is Galaxy 15. About a month ago, April 5, Intelsat lost control of the satellite. That’s not so unusual; all satellites eventually go bad. But when most satellite die, they die. Galaxy 15 isn’t responding any more, but it still thinks it’s alive, and that’s what’s causing the problem.

Galaxy 15 carried some C-band programming, almost all scrambled, which cable TV systems picked up, descrambled, and passed along to their subscribers. You can get a good idea of what it had by seeing what’s on Galaxy 12, the replacement that Intelsat quickly moved into position. Galaxy 15 thinks that it’s still relaying those signals, so it’s continuing to broadcast on similar frequencies.

Without a steady hand to keep it in one place, Galaxy 15 is shuffling over to a Lagrange point, one of those gravitational dips that weakly attract wandering objects. Along the way, it’s going to pass by AMC 11, an SES New Skies satellite that also broadcasts to cable systems on similar C-band frequencies. They’re not too worried about collisions; there’s a lot of room up there, and plenty of time to move out of the way. But Galaxy 15 could get close enough to interfere with AMC 11′s signals. If the satellite operators don’t take corrective action, cable subscribers could have to spend several days without MTV.

For a more thorough discussion of this situation, your best choice is Doug Lung’s updated story in TV Technology.

* My latest tweet (you are following FTAList on Twitter, aren’t you?) concerns the US Court of Appeals ruling on setting damages on satellite piracy. The original case was three years ago, but the appeal was decided yesterday.

A jury found that one sad guy had watched unauthorized DirecTV signals for 435 days, so he was fined $43,500. Another guy had distributed four illegal devices, and he got hit with $44,000.

Not only is piracy unethical and bad karma, it’s also got a terrible risk-reward ratio. But you already knew that.

* When you’re away from your dish, the next best thing is TVU Networks for Windows, iPhone or iPad. You’ll recognize a lot of the foreign-language channels that are available FTA, plus several public-domain movie channels that are almost as good as White Springs used to be. Poke around the long list of channels and check it out.

In a thread in the FTA section of DBSTalk, someone wrote, “I don’t understand why FTA isn’t more popular.” That’s a good question. (Okay, it’s not actually a question, but you get the idea.)

There are at least two good reasons why FTA isn’t more popular. The first is analogous to the difference between paying DVR fees vs. building your own DVR.

The big channel providers (cable, pay-TV satellite) promote their DVRs through lots of advertising. Their monthly DVR fees pad the bottom line, and having lots of stored programming reduces customers’ desire to leave for another provider.

But a savvy viewer could take an ordinary computer, add a card or two and some software, sign up with a free listings service, and create his own DVR with zero monthly fees and full portability.

So why don’t more viewers make their own DVR? Initial cost, time, technical competence, convenience, and promotion. Making a DVR costs a few hundred if you don’t have a suitable spare computer sitting around. It takes time to find and install all the necessary pieces. It takes a small bit of technical competence (or at least technical confidence) to open up a computer and add a card. This is nowhere nearly as convenient as letting the nice installer hook up your ready-to-go DVR. Finally, if you’re a techie, you’ve read stories about home-grown DVRs about a tenth as often as you’ve seen ads for providers’ DVRs. If you’re not a techie, you might never have heard of home-grown DVRs at all.

FTA is very similar. Compared to the millions the big providers pour into advertising, the promotion of FTA shines like a dime on the floor of a treasure vault. It takes real out-of-pocket cash to get started with FTA, and it takes a bit of work and technical competence. But folks who have figured it out know that it’s worth it.

One thing FTA needs is a receiver that’s as easy to use as a cable box. But FTA receivers also need to handle a variety of new and challenging DVB-S2 formats with high bit rates to support true HD programming. Right now, those two goals seem to be incompatible. I’m looking forward to the day when I get a receiver as rock-solid as my old Fortec Star Mercury II, yet able to handle every FTA HD signal that’s thrown at it. Maybe in another year or so?

The second big reason that true, legal FTA isn’t more popular is piracy. In some people’s minds, FTA = piracy. That’s because a lot of pirates use “FTA” to mean pirating signals. Some Dish Network folks talk about a “FTA problem” when they, no doubt, really mean a piracy problem.

FTA feels a little too good to be true. (All these channels, and I never have to pay anyone for them, ever?) Take that thought and add in a distant echo of an old busted-pirate news story or your co-worker’s second cousin’s trailer-park friend, and you’ll get some people who believe that any FTA must be illegal or immoral or something. It’s not entirely logical, but I’ve seen it happen.

Personally, I think the answer is to come up with a new name for legal FTA. Imagine an association of equipment dealers and broadcasters (e.g. FreeDBS, or an reincarnated White Springs) coming up with a trademarked name for watching in-the-clear satellite TV signals. Then maybe we’d start transitioning to a discussion of KleerSat channels.

Earlier this week, I was getting excited about adding a new over-the-air broadcast channel to FTAList. KNWS (Katy / Houston TX) was in the clear on AMC 21, where it joined all those great PBS feeds. But KNWS isn’t a PBS affiliate. It’s thoroughly independent, providing daily doses of The Cosby Show, Rosanne and Cheaters. Just as I prepared to update the database and send a tweet about it, I made one last check. KNWS was gone. Darn it!

And the weird thing is that almost the same thing happened the next day. CNN, of all things, popped up in one of the Veterans Administration slots on Galaxy 18. This time, I knew that there was essentially no chance that this would last long. Sometimes satellite operators copy a signal up through a slot like that just to make sure it’s working, and this looked like one of those times. Still, just as I was about to send a tweet about this one, CNN was gone. Nice while it lasted.

Although I’ve seen similar temporary channels while blind-scanning the skies, these two tips both came from posters at Ricks Satellite forum. Even though I can’t point at a new “permanent” channel right now, at least I can remind you to check Ricks for the latest in temporary channels, especially sports feeds. It’s great for Ku-band, but if you have a big C-band dish, Ricks is as good as it gets.

Echostar's a separate company from Dish, so this photo isn't that relevant. Oh well.

Once again at a big convention, I’ve come up with an idea that has very little to do with the show.

This morning, I watched a presentation about mobile over-the-air TV. After that, I saw the keynote speech by NAB CEO Gordon Brown. (He’s a much better speaker than his predecessor, BTW.) Brown said that the public is better served by keeping broadcast TV rather than turning that spectrum over to wireless internet companies.

And that reminded me of the limited spectrum, the finite satellite positions taken up by pay-TV satellite providers.

By rule, a certain percentage of channels on each satellite have to be for non-profit, public interest programing. NASA TV, Angel One, and C-SPAN are three examples of PI channels.

Did those first two remind you of something? They used to be in the clear until Dish Network scrambled them a few months ago.

Dish interprets the PI mandate to provide them for free but only to active Dish receivers. What if the government wrote a more directed rule that, to provide the widest public service, all PI channels must stay unscrambled for any receiver? We’d get at least a dozen new channels, Dish would lose essentially no subscribers, and all of that public service programming would reach a wider audience. Sounds good to me!

(That photo of the Echostar booth here at the NAB Show isn’t strictly relevant to this topic. I just wanted to post one of the photos I took today.)