dhd@hou4b.UUCP (08/23/84)
I am disgusted with network television. I am also disgusted with the alternatives. The cable company that serves our area says they will not be running cable to our neighborhood because the housing density is not great enough (their cost would be too high). When I called WHT, they said they didn't know if they would be serving our area since the cable company had done such a good job of monopolizing the market (they were not getting enough orders). What alternatives can I pursue at this point? Does anyone out there have any information on dish antennas? How much are they? Can I get cable-type programming and channels this way? Dan Dawdy ATTISL - Holmdel hou4b!dhd 201-834-3650
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (08/24/84)
Your alternatives are:
1) STV -- scrambled UHF programming (mostly movies and sports)
2) MDS -- microwave (mostly movies)
3) DBS -- direct satellite broadcast (to small dishes, still not
available). Many of the organizations that filed for
DBS have now dropped out, apparently deciding that it
wasn't as lucrative as they originally assumed.
All of the above are the sorts of services to which you can
subscribe when/if available.
As for big dishes and non-paying reception off of satellites, you
can spend a couple of thousand for a dish, but note that over the
next couple of years most of the premium programming sources and
many of the non-premiums will be scrambling with DES-based systems
that are "essentially" uncrackable. So you might be throwing quite
a bit of money down a black hole.
--Lauren--chip@t4test.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal) (08/29/84)
--- REFERENCED ARTICLE --------------------------------------------- >Subject: Are there alternatives to CABLE TV? >Newsgroups: net.tv >From: dhd@hou4b.UUCP >Date: Thu, 23-Aug-84 10:31:38 PDT > >What alternatives can I pursue at this point? >Does anyone out there have any information on dish antennas? >How much are they? >Can I get cable-type programming and channels this way? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fat chance. There is a ruckus right now in the San Jose area with the local cable company locating dishes which are probably picking off broadcasts such as HPO, and sending nasty notes to the owners of these dishes. The notes are something to the effect of, "Give us $400 and burn your antenna, or we'll see you in court. Have a nice day." (But this issue has been discussed already elsewhere on the net.) The point is, one of the things I got out of the deluge of news articles (San Jose Mercury...not USENET) was that if you call up HBO, tell them that you have an antenna, you are picking up their unencoded signal, and you wish to have them pay them for use of their services, they will laugh in your face. So, it is illegal to pick up their signal (as the majority of recent court rulings would seem to indicate), and it is impossible to legally acquire their signal except through your friendly neighborhood mass video merchant. If I remember correctly, this fact is to be used in the citizens suit against the local cable company. (Yes, the folks who received the letters have filed suit. And of course the cable company then launched a countersuit.) But for the life of me I can't recall how it will be used, nor can I figure out what difference it makes. So, the moral of the story is buy a VCR. Or give up television. -- Chip Rosenthal, Intel/Santa Clara { idi|intelca|icalqa|kremvax|qubix|ucscc } ! t4test ! { chip|news }