I haven't found anything this month.. any one else? lol

Picked up a working SNES at a flea market during a local festival last week.

Also got Jak 2 for $8, Ratchet and Clank 2 for $11. Not bad deals.

Well, I did find a DSR-920 4DTV satellite receiver for cheap at a local thrift store. When I got it, I thought the internal battery would be dead and the decoder ID would be lost (aka = trash)... but for the price, I chanced it.

I got it home, hooked it to my 10' mesh, and surprisingly, it worked well.

Yesterday, I went to radio shack and bought a lithium battery, a soldering iron kit (my iron quit working a long time ago, and I was using a solder sucker to do stuff before lol) ... and a AA-sized holder. The 4dtv uses half AA sized batteries, but the full size ones are suppose to be better quality... To make a long story short, after struggling to find the right torx bits to take the case apart and take out the videocipher II cage, the soldering job was pretty easy.

Doing this type of work is a lot different than just replacing a battery on other electronics. These systems, like the CPS-2 systems, store encrypted information that can be lost when the battery dies. So, you have to keep a constant voltage in the receiver at all times.

Some people achieve a constant voltage by keeping the receiver plugged in to a wall outlet while doing it, along with maybe a UPS backup battery. Others (more commonly) do paralleling. Once a connection is made through paralleling, you have to get the original battery disconnected as fast as possible, because #1: the first/older battery can drain the new battery and #2: these lithium batteries have been known to explode while doing this procedure.

Since these receivers come out in 1997 and their batteries have an average lifespan of 10 years, it was something that needed to be done. Repair centers charge around $80-$100 to change out the battery, or if the battery is already dead and the decoder ID is lost, around $250-$300 to fix them. The actual battery I took out was dated in 98. So, it may have had another year left, but now it should have another 10.

The receiver, the way it was, was probably worth around $80-$100 on the market, because it could last a year or two, or it could die any time... After the new battery was put in, it's probably worth closer to $200-$250.

If you're wondering what 4DTV is, it's actually a new technology that came out in 97 that brought the big c-band satellite dishes into the digital era. At the time, it would have cost dish owners around $4000 to upgrade from their old analog system to 4dtv analog/digital. 4DTV brought dolby digital compatability to the home user, as well as HDTV channels later on.

At the same time 4dtv systems were coming out, many companies abandoned the big dishes, to push smaller dvb/dss dishes. Primestar, Directv, Dish Network, Star Choice, etc. People were lied to, told they were going to lost all of their subscriptions if they didn't switch to the small dishes. Most people believed what they said and abandoned their big dishes. Now, in 2007, we're just now seeing c-band analog programming coming to an end, but still a lot of stuff on the digital side is still on and even more channels coming to it, albeit it's not as healthy as other services any more.

Small dish services take c-band feeds, compress them to even worse quality, and then broadcast those channels to their subscribers.

Even with the low number of c-band subscribers (around 220,000 left) c-band 4dtv I believe will be here until all satellites are forced to switch to the new mpeg-4 formats (4DTV and star choice both use DigiCipher II, which is an mpeg-2 format) ...

Anyway, probably more than you wanted to know, probably in the wrong section.. but that's ok..

How the hell do you know so much about this stuff?

I've owned 4 c-band dishes, the latter being one I had to setup completely, re-built myself, did my homework, etc.

I've setup probably around 50 small dishes, have all the tuning kits, signal meters, etc for them, even ku-band horizon to horizon motorized dishes.

There are thousands of free channels out there for people to get, but not really thousands of american/english channels. They broadcast in several different formats: dvb mpeg-2, digicipher ii mpeg-2, analog ntsc, c-band linear, c-band circular (for international), ku-band linear, ku-band circular.

For around $500, you can setup a mini ku-band motorized dish and receiver, although for some, it may not be worth it. G10R (123w) has some pretty good networks, retro television network, and some spanish stuff. That's probably where a lot of people would stay, but if you're from the middle east, you can get a lot of stuff from 97w... They have some pretty corny music video stations heh.

G4 tech tv was free for a long time, but they've encrypted their channels recently. Much music, fuse, imf, and a soundtrack music channel use to also be on c-band for free. not sure if they're still there now though.

Imaginasian and The Tube are on c-band free as well. Imaginasian was interesting. They have some anime, as well as korean and japanese shows. The Tube is probably the best music video channel around, as they have no reality show crap on.. just music videos 24/7...

I've been watching a fairly new channel on the 4dtv receiver called Funimation, which is a 24/7 japanese animation channel... I think they also broadcast on several over the air stations, as well as part-time on colours tv (2-4? hours per day?)

It's mostly just a hobby for me, but with the 4dtv receiver, I can get their super digital package for around $25.83 per month, all tax-free, and it's similar to what most people are paying $75+ per month on dish network and directv for. I buy the starz package all the time too, for around $11 per month, and it actually has like 3x the ammount of starz channels Dish and DTV offer... I think it's around 34 channels, including 2 HD channels.

4DTV (and star choice) HD channels are up to 29.27Mbps. Dish and DTV take many of these 29Mbps HD feeds and compress them down to appx 18-19Mbps on their mpeg-2 feeds, while their new mpeg-4 HD feeds are between 6 and 10Mbps. Just for a comparison, dish's standard def feeds range from 2Mbps to 7Mbps but probably average around 4. PPV and some of the premiums probably get the larger bandwidth.

Dish and Bell Express are planning on completely going mpeg-4 eventually. What this will allow them to do is instead of putting 500 standard def channels on one satellite, they may be able to put 1000 or even 1500+, or add more hi-def channels, but the cost is losing quality.

Cable companies and satellite providers are probably what has kept c-band satellits alive for so many years, but there are still over 200,000 subscribers out there.

Why do I know so much about it? I suppose, in a way, I'm cheap lol... If I fix the system myself, it's the cost of parts alone and not labor... and the channels are cheaper too.. no city, state, federal taxes on big dish programming any more.. and the programming is about 25% of the cost of mini dish systems. The only drawbacks I see are not having PPV and no locals.

We get much more freeviews on pay channels. Hell, the whole discovery channel suite is open 6 months out of the year, and in many cases, discovery HD. There are probably 20+ other pay channels in freeview mode right now, including some pay networks, one showtime feed, tv land, AMC, msnbc, cnbc, hallmark, USA, and more. Some pop up for a couple hours or a day or two, while others will stay open for weeks or even months at a time..

Our first dish (when I was a kid) was a 10' one, at about the time when HBO was just going pay. It didn't have a motor. So, the dish had to be hand-cranked to whatever satellite you needed it on. Pretty much everything on it was free. My father probably either got the dish free or on trade for something.

Anyway, we only had that dish a short time, because I believe he didn't want us kids having access to the porn channels. The porn channels came on sometime in the evening or early night, and I remember my older brother gathering all of the neighborhood kids to our house and had it playing. My mother walked in and ran everyone out of the house lol.

My uncle just had to have that dish (I'm sure for the free porn lol), and my dad sold it to him.

Several years later, I traded an old electric guitar and amp for a 6' fiberglass dish. It too was a hand crank system. It cost like $89 for a new pole at the welding shop. The video quality sucked pretty bad on most channels. Again, I didn't have a videocipher.. So, I couldn't get any pay channels, but I do remember surfing the skies one day and finding the FX channel, probably the same day it came out. It was a great channel and was free for probably 6+ months. It was one of the few clear channels. Now, the channel sucks. Anyway, I think I could have gotten a lot better video quality with a better LNB, because it was probably a 65 or 85 degree (lower = better) lnb.

The satellite guy that set up my dish recommended we get a new dish. So, we ended up getting a 10' dish, 30 degree california amp lnbf, GI 450I (or 550i, can't remember) receiver, and videocipher module and installation for $3500.

Before we got this satellite, my father didn't watch a lot of television, but afterwards, he took it over, getting a uhf anywhere remote and sending a coax into his room. It got to where we had to fight over it.. I'd start watching tv, and he'd change the channel.. pissed me off a bunch of times heh.

Then, like I said before, there were so many lies that c-band was dying and that we were going to lose all our channels if we didn't go to the small dish. The alternative was to go to digital c-band. My father went to the satellite shop and inquired about 4dtv, and they told him it'd cost around $4000 more to upgrade to 4dtv. So, we went to the small dish. With that being said, analog c-band was still going strong for many years, like I said until the last probably two years. So, 4dtv nor the small dish was necessary at the time.

In the time that we had it up, I enjoyed it a lot. MTV, The Box (any one remember this music channel?).. Scifi channel.. I mean, they even had cattle auctions on c-band lol... There was a lot of channels that use to be good back then but have all changed their programming so much that they're not any good any more.

The 4th dish, I got my own place and decided to put the old dish back up, but my parents threw away many of the critical parts. So, I had to buy and trade for parts, another dish with the polar mount intact, replace the motor, buy ribbon cable, and receivers. It was probably around 2 years ago when I started on that project.

Analog channels were pretty much on their way out. So, I bought a 4dtv receiver and used it maybe a year before selling off the new c/ku feedhorn and receiver, and several other analog receivers...

Then, a few weeks ago, I found another 4dtv receiver at the salvation army and it kind of sparked my interest again. Just bought a Hi-Def decoder for it and only have to buy a new c/ku feedhorn and it'll be ready again, although I do have an old c-band lnbf on it for the time being just to get by until the new one is bought.

Anyway, I learned almost everything about setting up satellites from the internet.