What can I do with a Satellite Dish?

Question

I found a DirecTV Dish by the dumpster (yes, I dumpster dive). What can I do with it? If I bought a control box thing and hooked it up, can I pick up a signal without paying for the service?

Thanks! Jeremy

Ok, how might I go about doing that?

Also, is there a way to use it for satellite internet?

Answer 1

DirecTV does not have a hack for it anymore. Dish network does and yes it's very illegal.

You CAN hook up this dish and LNB to a legal FTA receiver which can be had for around $100 and you'll get a few free channels. The channels that the previous answerer is talking about can NOT be picked up with a DirecTV dish for two reasons; 1, it is too small, and 2, it has the wrong polarization LNB as it is meant for DBS satellites/frequencies, not linear Ku band sats like the free Fox, PBS, etc are on.

What are the free channels you can get? Besides the barker channels (tells you about PPV movies, channel changes, channel placeholders with elevator music) and Charlie Chat, you can get NASA-TV (the space shuttle, etc), Gol TV (usually soccer in spanish), Jesus Satellite TV, Brigham Young University TV, Angel One (religious), a few radio stations, most of the Muzak radio station tier, and that's about it. Everything else is scrambled, and all of the other satellites require a bigger dish and a linear LNB. Oh I forgot to mention, all those channels aren't from the same satellite, but about 4 or 5 different ones so you might have to repoint it depending on which of those channels you want to watch/hear. ;-) If you want to see the complete list, go to these links and look for the channels in yellow:

http://www.lyngsat.com/61west.html 61.5 W
http://www.lyngsat.com/nimiq2.html 82 W
http://www.lyngsat.com/nimiq1.html 91 W
http://www.lyngsat.com/110west.html 110 W
http://www.lyngsat.com/echo7.html 119 W (Muzak, NASA)
http://www.lyngsat.com/148west.html 148 W (just 1 barker ch!)

Also, the light green ones on 82W are free too, but you have to have an HDTV FTA receiver to get it, or a FTA PCI receiver card for your computer.

Here's some FTA receivers:
http://www.sadoun.com/Sat/Order/Receivers/Free-to-Air-Receivers.htm

You will find them cheaper on eBay, even from Sadoun himself ;-)

Oh and your question about satellite internet, no sorry that requires a bigger dish and a different LNB. For two way satellite that requires even more specialized equipment. You MIGHT get the dish itself to work with WildBlue 2 way sat internet if you had the right equipment but it would really be a lot of bother since it's Ka band thus having less tolerance for reflector imperfections and the WildBlue satellite dishes use a double reflector so the LNB's would have to be disected to reverse the polarization, or a subreflector would have to be added to the DirecTV dish. It's not worth it for satellite internet. If you want free music and NASA-TV (or maybe some of the others too?) then it might be worthwhile for you to get a FTA receiver to go with that dish. FTA receivers are really much more useful with an old Primestar Dish and LNB. Go dumpster diving for those next ;-)

Answer 2

Well, it's not that easy and at the same time it is.

First, you can't have directv programming for free (actually you can but it's illegal)

Second, if you are lucky enough to make it work, you could use the dish with an open dvb receiver to tune into open satellite tv stations. Yes, there are free TV stations broadcasting on satellite, too. Fox networks has some stations set that way, PBS and others, too. Religious channels are also for free, and don't forget the educational ones.