What are Free to Air or FTA Satellite Dishes?

Free to air TV began in the 1970’s when home owners began setting up their own satellite dishes. Back then all satellite TV was free to air, including all the premium movie channels. Later on the providers of premium content like HBO, Discovery Channel, etc, began to charge  Dish Network and others offered cheap systems with a monthly fee that were much smaller than these large eight foot dishes.

There are still a lot of channels that did not get scrambled. If you aren’t too picky and just want some extra channels to add to your over the air ones, or if you live in a remote area where there are no broadcast channels, an FTA or free to air satellite dish is ideal for you.

There are over 40 Christian satellite channels free, all the major networks, feeds which are unedited transmissions from the network to local stations, music channels, shopping channels plus loads of foreign channels. Using a free to air dish takes a little getting used to, but once you find the channels you like it is easy. Chances are the channels you want to watch are scattered out over several satellites. That is why you will want a FTA satellite system with a motor that automatically moves the dish to the next satellite.

The size of a free to air or FTA satellite dish is just a bit bigger than the circumference of a bicycle wheel, or about 29 inches across and can be mounted on a fixed pole in the ground or on a wall.

You can find whole FTA kit in the nearest electric and television shops.