What is Free-To-Air?
Sonicview, Coolsat, Viewsat, Digiwave, Pansat, Neosat, NFusion, ProSat, and the list goes on and on! Where did all of these receivers come from? While the U.S. and Canadian Cable industry distributes their programming largely via products sold by Motorola and a few others, the rest of the world chose the MPEG-2 format. Granted, even though, the Motorola Digicipher II has some MPEG-2 attributes, it nevertheless remains a totally proprietary platform. Who has chosen MPEG-2 as a platform? Dish Network, Scientific Atlanta, and the rest of the world have. Even DirecTV is a early version of MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is a digital platform that allows several digital broadcasts to be compressed onto one frequency or channel. Without MPEG-2, Digicipher, or other compression platform, it would not be possible to have direct broadcast television services like DirecTV or Dish Network. Equally important is the way the programmers get the their product to their retail outlets such as DBS and cable. They too have chosen compressed digital transmissions largely due to cost. PAX on GE-1 is an example of this.

What does MPEG2-FTA mean?
MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group. It is a method for compressing data. FTA stands for "Free to Air"- meaning that the signal is not encrypted with conditional access. . Smart Cards or Conditional Access Modules, are generally used to decode scrambled signals.

MPEG-2 is not an encryption method although encryption can be added. Dish Network uses the Nagra system of encryption, DirecTV uses a News Data system, and full view big dish primarily uses the Digicipher system. Transponder time has become so expensive that with the exception of the preachers, the porno channels, and the home shopping networks, it doesn't make sense to place only one channel on one frequency. With HBO, and Discovery Networks planning 25 channels each, it would take over two C-Band birds to air their material the old fashioned analog way.

What can be seen on Free to Air?
FTA or "Free To Air" simply means that the signal is not encrypted. Most cable type programming is encrypted. Occasionally programmers may turn the scrambler machine off and you can see a channel or two with an MPEG-2fta receiver. You will never see Time Warner cable programming, i.e. CNN, HBO in fta mode in the U.S.. CNN, and other international news channels, are available to viewers around the world in free to air mode, but not to the U.S..

In the U.S. there are a number of channels that are available via MPEG-2 FTA receivers that have indicated that they plan to remain in the clear or are believed to intending to stay clear. These include Saudi TV, Abu Dhabi, Thai TV, Kuwait TV, Syria TV, Taiwan, Iran, and as we go to press, Bloomberg TV all on Telstar 5, ku, which can be received on a .7 meter dish. The list changes now and then but these and more can be seen today.

GE-1 is the home of a bouquet of channels from Paxton Communication's PAX TV. PanAmSat 9 at 58 degrees west is home to the RTP, EWTN, CCTV China, NHK, Deutche Wella, an Arab bouquet in PAL, and a channel from Colombia. Some of the channels from the middle east have scrambled but their feeds to Australia remain in the clear. These feeds use the PAL format but a receiver like the BEC will convert the picture to NTSC, the North American format. MPEG2 FTA feeds are numerous and more and more are being added every day. The economics of compression, allowing more than one service on each frequency dictate that we will see more. Every time another satellite fails, and they are failing, we see the prices of transponder time go up. A couple of thousand dollars an hour for a better bird are not unusual for part time use.