Earlier this week, I was getting excited about adding a new over-the-air broadcast channel to FTAList. KNWS (Katy / Houston TX) was in the clear on AMC 21, where it joined all those great PBS feeds. But KNWS isn’t a PBS affiliate. It’s thoroughly independent, providing daily doses of The Cosby Show, Rosanne and Cheaters. Just as I prepared to update the database and send a tweet about it, I made one last check. KNWS was gone. Darn it!
And the weird thing is that almost the same thing happened the next day. CNN, of all things, popped up in one of the Veterans Administration slots on Galaxy 18. This time, I knew that there was essentially no chance that this would last long. Sometimes satellite operators copy a signal up through a slot like that just to make sure it’s working, and this looked like one of those times. Still, just as I was about to send a tweet about this one, CNN was gone. Nice while it lasted.
Although I’ve seen similar temporary channels while blind-scanning the skies, these two tips both came from posters at Ricks Satellite forum. Even though I can’t point at a new “permanent” channel right now, at least I can remind you to check Ricks for the latest in temporary channels, especially sports feeds. It’s great for Ku-band, but if you have a big C-band dish, Ricks is as good as it gets.
2 Comments to 'Hard to pin down new FTA channels'
May 6, 2010
Howdy you all…. well, I see that there not a lot of action on this part of the blog, so I would like to share with you something that I accidently stumbled accross last week…. While seting up a Starchoice system, I thought I would move the dish over to the Galaxy 19 satellite… I was quite supprised to find that after a little “tweeking” of the dish, I was able to get all of the channels that I was watching with the 30″ dish… But the best part is that I was getting these at about 5-less on the “Q” with the oliptical dish as compaired to the 30″ dish which I have in line… the best part yet is that I was able to pick up both of the RTV channels also… I am hoping to pick up a larger starchoice dish, and continue the experimenting…. This is a lot of fun… I’m now going to try and get into some other satellites, and if the results are favorable, I will let you know…….. Cheers Reg
May 10, 2010
I have been trying to get the pbs channels on k/u, and although I have not succeeded, I understand that there is something that I will have to do to get the audio portion to come in…. I understand that there are about five channels, and thats about as far as I have got…. If anyone can help me with some basic down to earth explaining of what I might be looking foreward to, regards to the audio on these, I sure would appreciate it…. Other than that, I might have to try c/band, as there are some feeds on that system…. Much Thanks Reg