Satellite Cards

[james636]

Does anyone know anything about satellite cards? Do they really work? What do you have to do? Is it a hassle? Must you have a Directv or Dishnetwork account? If they do work, for how long? As you can see from all the questions, I don't know too much about satellite tv or the cards.

[ViRaL1]

If you mean the 'get all the channels' satellite cards, they're not exactly legal, at least not here in the states. AFAIK most if not all modern dish receivers take a card, it's what tells the receiver what you can and can't access.

[Faustus]

The cards they sale are Free to Air cards. They can get unencrypted channels off of sats. They dont recieve Dishnetwork or DirecTV except with the use of illegal software which cannot be discussed here.

Personally the whole thing sounds like a huge pain in the ass to me.

[Abbadon]

Hi,

I would say, don't bother with a satellite card if you are in the States, they are very popular in Europe, specially in Germany, many movies and TV shows to watch in the old continent. You can even sign up for Internet by satellite in Europe. As far as I know, in the United States only DirecTV provides this kind of Internet connection and it is called DirectWay (slow as hell and not good for gamers).

I have one and I can watch Free to air channels such as NASA, and some Christian programming, one or two foreign TV channels from a couple of sats, including Radio stations with decent music.

The card gets very hot, I was forced to buy a PCI fan to cool it down a little.

[snafu099]

Here is a link to a site that has some info that may help.
While this dealer is local (S. Ca. USA) the info should give a clue as to what can be done, what to search for to find something local to you

http://www.bestbuysat.com

[lordsmurf]

This belongs in the DIGITAL TV forum.

[Heff]

Go on ebay and get a Twinhan 1020A for around $80 and yes they work. Go to this forum for your best information.

http://forums.al7bar.tk/forumdisplay.php?f=50

[SatStorm]

The most popular PCI card in Europe, currently is Sky Star 2. It is cheap and does a lot of things. In Europe we can receive about 2000 FTA channels from "commercial" satellites, like Astra, Hotbird, W2, Eurobird, Thor, etc...

There are also those other cards with common interface. You can add a Cam Access Module to them and then you can insert a legal subscription card and watch the service. All the systems supported, except NDS/Videoguard (the States, UK and Israel use NDS/Videoguard).
There is also a Nagravision Cam, but I don't believe you can use it with the USA services (plus you gonna have to import it there from Asia or Europe)

[ruxntwo]

Get you a FTA Fortec (Silverbird) receiver off ebay.