We kept the same front-page logo

After much too much time finding problems and overcoming them, I’ve got FTAList.com version 2.0 available for public viewing. Just click this link to go directly there. Anyone using old .htm links will still see the old site, but you know better now, so you can see the new stuff.

The new site has a glossary (thanks for the suggestion), a troubleshooting section, and a fresher, cleaner look. The channel lists are now served dynamically, which means no more waiting for daily page updates.

The time spent getting everything updated has come at the expense of the channel updates (if that makes any sense), so the next few days will be spent getting that back under control. For example, ION (ion? Ion?) is apparently scrambled now.

Please go take a look and report any problems. The only one I’ve noticed so far is a problem with the borders of Deal of the Day in the front page using Internet Explorer 7. (Gotta fix that!) There are bound to be more, so either leave comments about them or use the Contact page (just fixed that one) to drop me a line.

Two fairly recent satellite books

There’s a real need for an updated, reader-friendly book about the state of satellite TV, especially for us FTA viewers. In the continuing quest to find this book, I read a couple of small editions that attack the topic from different directions.

The most interesting was Start a TV Station by Brock Fisher. This is a very small book. It’s just 77 pages, and those pages are just 5.25 x 7.75 inches. To put that in perspective, the user manual that came with my most recent FTA receiver was half an inch wider, half an inch taller, and 108 pages. It appears to be a print-on-demand book; mine included the date I ordered it on the back page.

But it’s selling pretty well, a few dozen a year on Amazon alone. It addresses a wish that pops up again and again in my emailbox: How can I start my own satellite TV channel? As he promotes his web site (www.tvstartup.com) as a one-stop shop, Fisher lays out the pieces you’d need to get your satellite channel going. He also discusses alternatives via OTA broadcast and internet streaming. And the best part is that he includes ballpark price estimates with all of these pieces, so the reader can start to get a handle on what it’ll take to get started.

There are problems with the book. The text and illustrations are frequently amateurish. The first word in the book is misspelled. The first picture is a poor screenshot of a LyngSat channel page. Typos and awkward grammar litter the whole book. The book ends without a summary; it flows straight from the last chapter to the glossary. And it’s not cheap; you’ll pay around 50 cents for each tiny page of content.

Yet there are signs of an author who might know what he’s doing. For example, Fisher points out that if you choose a satellite that’s already popular with FTA viewers, you’ll have a larger initial potential audience. If you’re hungry for this kind of information, then maybe you’re willing to forgive the medium and buy this book for the message.

The other book was The Satellite Technology Guide for the 21st Century by Virgil S. Labrador and friends. Compared to the first book, it seems as huge as an encyclopedia, but it’s really just 200 pages and only a bit taller.

The Guide has lots of problems, too. First is its odd, distracting font with hyphens, colons and semicolons that float much higher than normal. Labrador’s chapters, the meat of the book, are very short. For example, he summarizes the history of satellite communications in nine illustrated pages. While not at Fisher’s level, the text is often awkward, and occasional typos pop up. The longest chapter, on VSATs (Very Small Aperature Terminals, the two-way satellite communication you see at some gas stations, for example), was written by a guy who has a company that sells VSATs.

This book is better written and less expensive, but who is its audience? Executives who need a really quick overview of the industry? Curious hobbyists who want a short description of the technology? I mean, I’d like to read Labrador’s earlier Heavens Fill with Commerce, which apparently spends a whole book on satellite history. Maybe this example applies to the rest of the Guide – for each section, you can probably find a better, more thorough treatment elsewhere.

No two ways about it, I need to write an FTA book later this year. What chapters and topics do you think it should cover? Post a comment and let me know.

Two backyard C-band dishes

There’s a thread over at DBSTalk that references a SkyReport note that says that a guy at National Programming Services said that Motorola said that they’d stop providing pay-TV programming to C-band viewers. (And I’ll send a prize to the first person to correctly diagram that sentence.)

This note revived the recurring theme that this is The End for C-band dishes. Previous versions of The End came when ESPN left and when NFL Sunday Ticket left. And if you really rely on C-band for your pay-TV programming, it would change everything if Motorola really shuts down its authorization stream.

But other posters in the thread claim that it’s all a ploy by NPS to convert its customers to Dish Network and pocket the referral fees. Other C-band programming vendors such as Skyvision are still offering annual contracts. So we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

From a FTA perspective, if you’re not a C-band subscriber, this isn’t so bad. Remember that C-band is where FTA got started, in the days when everything was unscrambled. Then C-band dishes sprouted in back yards, then cable TV operators began getting annoyed; they persuaded the senders to scramble most signals. Viewers eventually shifted to cable or small-dish pay-TV, and the C-band dishes shriveled (ok, rusted) away until only a small fraction of them remained in operation.

Perhaps as a result, now there’s an amazing array of sports feeds and other stuff on C-band if you’ve got a capable HD FTA receiver. You can visit Ricks Satellite Forum to see what’s been available in recent weeks. For regular channels in the clear, there’s always the great C-band list at Global Communications.

Maybe when pay-TV subscriptions on C-band finally pass away, a few more dishes will come down. (Which will be more used C-band dishes on the market. They’re already pretty cheap.) Maybe it will also mean that broadcasters and cable systems will worry less about the dishes that stay up. And then maybe we’ll see more and more content in the clear on C-band.