FTA (Free to Air)
Many people don't know what FTA even means. Freetoairfiles helps Free to air newbies every day. We pride ourselves on our customer service and knowledgable staff. This page will teach you a little about what FTA means and what FTA is used for. If you have any other questions feel free to contact us anytime at support@freetoairfiles.com
Neither of the two (free to air & free to view) can be conisdered as pay-TV. PayTV is a television sercive which is paid for such as PPV (pay per view). These broadcasts are encrypted which means they are NOT FTA. Most people call these services "Satellite Television". FTA (free to air) basically means what it stands for which is FTA television you don't need to pay for. Here in North America there are many different competing saltellite companies. In the early Satellite TV days these companies would use the Ku-Band Satellties to broadcast their signals. Some FTA Receivers were around when Ku-Band was. But nowadays most of the satellite companies are using the standard DVB.
FTA is a more recent innovation in the satellite TV world. Meaning Free to Air, the term refers to using an FTA receiver to watch thousands of satellite TV channels for completely free. All you need to get started is a free to air receiver (Pansat, Coolsat, Conaxsat, and many other greats brand names) and a satellite dish within the specs required by the satellite you wish to point at. Most satellites only require a standard DTV compliant dish which is easily found at any satellite TV or electronics store.
When you have both hardware pieces required you can start with pointing your dish. In order to complete this you will need to have a coaxial cable running from where you have the dish and making its way to the FTA receiver which should also be connected to you television. This job can be one of the most tedious when installing your FTA setup. You may want to get someone experienced with running wires and climbing ladders (dish is usually mounted on roof). Pointing the dish is not very difficult.
You can find extremely usefull information and tools to help you through this process online by checking out a couple FTA Support websites. These sites offer complete packages to get you started with FTA. Most FTA support sites will supply you with all the current FTA keys, files, software, updates, and troubleshooting help. We highly recommend the use of one of these sites if you are new to this. Freetoairfiles is by far the biggest and moste experienced of all the FTA support sites. Once you have the satellite properly pointed you can setup your receiver. This job can also be slightly tricky to a newbie.
Another reason to consider purchasing some good and reliable FTA support. Usually you can scout out the best website to go with by sending them a quick email before joining an learnin the wait time for a reply. You can also use this method to determine if your emails will be answered by a person or by some sort of automated response software. You do not want to use a site that uses automatic responding due to the fact that trusting a human is far easier and smarter then trusting software with you free to air troubleshooting.
Once you have found some support you can start. You will need to go into the options of your receiver and select the actual satellite your dish is pointing to. You will most likely also be required to load some firmware updates and possibly som software updates. Also remember that at some time you may also need to enter FTA keys manually. Make sure that you familiarize yourself on this process because it is highly likely that there will come a time you must do it. Entering current FTA keys manually involves entering the setup screen of which ever receiver you own and find your key code section of the setup. Every receiver IS different and the settings and methods described here do vary so make sure you learn the way to do it on your actual make and model. When in the key entry part of the menu enter the latest keys required to view channels and save your changes..
