C Band Satellite Dish

[JRHawk2003]

Does anyone still use these?

I remember back in the old days (80's) you got chips to unscramble channels and it was sort of a wild west with stuff like porn even on there.

I am sure its not like that anymore, but I was wondering if its still around.

 

[Titanhawk2]

With everything scrambled I think it wouldn't be that great. I did find something that said there were 100 channels broadcasting free regularly and 150 "wild" feeds, but can't imagine how premium that stuff might be.

I remember watching the feeds from Seattle after the Iowa-UNLV game of the post-game interviews and regular instances of watching news anchors who were off-camera because the actual feed broke to somewhere else.

 

[Funky Bunch]

What's the state flower of WV?

 

[JRHawk2003]

I know these were pretty big until you had the DirecTV's and Dish Networks come out. I remember some bars having them.

 

[Herkmeister]

I can't believe how many hours I sat in front of that scrambled screen just to see a tit !!!!!!!!

 

[bagdropper]

My parents had one pre-scrambling. Late 70's. Power arm to tune it all the satellites. It was very high tech for the era.

Playboy Channel on sat F4 transponder 7 I believe. Good times for a 16 year old. I'd have parties at my parent's house when they'd leave town, and everybody would watch the thing in awe. It was hilarious, seeing girls react to seeing porn for the first time. Cable TV was in it's infancy back then in CR...they couldn't believe someone could get a hundred channels free, let alone porn.

I remember the US Festival, I found a live feed of it in the clear. Every band, every song. Canadian TV. Every pro and college sport broadcast there was. Wildcat feeds of satellite remotes from TV stations across America...crazy. Then there were west coast feeds of pretty much everything, so when I got home from work, I could still catch what was on 3 hours earlier...never missed anything.

My parents had a Zenith projection set back then...probably a 50" set that would rise out of it's cabinet. We'd stay up until dawn watching it. Mesmerizing.

The dish itself is still in my parents' backyard of the house I grew up at. Once scrambling came into play, my dad didn't want to pony up the bill to get a descrambler, so it slowly but surely dropped off to nothing free and clear by the late 80's.

 

[JRHawk2003]

There must be services that you can get some sort of box from and pay for a package.

 

[bagdropper]

Wikipedia says you can still buy packages through a couple companies yet. That stunned me. I though C/K band had died out in the US and that no more STB's were being manufactured. This was roughly around 2010.

I highly doubt though one can receive as well as a well aimed DBS dish unless they got a pretty big dish perfectly aimed. There's 23 C band sats and 38 K band sats. That's an enormous arc to steady to with either type of them. Every rig I ever saw had a falloff on the outside sats...the weight of the dishes made it where when the dish was leaning to a side, the arc would get just a trifle out of alignment. Straighten it out, worked perfect. Aiming those damn things was friggin' hard as I recall.

I remember at certain times of the year, the sun would actually cause loss of signal, usually 3:30ish in the afternoon if my memory is good. Picture would just get snowy for 5-10 minutes, then clear as the sun passed.

I remember our house being really popular for NFL games. Sunday Ticket before there ever was such a thing as Sunday Ticket.

I still see many of these set up when I drive through Iowa, aimed like they're still in use. Farms mainly. I knew a buddy of mine from way back, haven't seen him since the early 2000's. He was still using a C band rig then. It wouldn't surprise me he still does.

 

[h-hawk]

We had a (IIRC) Uniden when we lived in Denver during the 1980s. Can't remember the receiver brand but I remember it was different than the dish. We got some Iowa games with it (the intended purpose) and also got a kick out of the Girls Basketball Tournament and all the Ag commercials. Can remember seeing Frank Gifford having his make up applied well before a broadcast. And the Tuxedo channel porn commercials.