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"Sanjay" sends in an email asking about satellite-ready PC-TV Tuner cards that can directly receive satellite TV signals without the need for a satellite TV set-top receiver box in the US -- this question is with regard to small-dish DBS/DSS pay-subscription satellite TV and not big dish systems:

> I found your web site extremely informative
> and educational, however it doesn't seem to
> answer my question, what about satellite TV?
> Some products claim they "work" with Sat TV.
> Isn't it true, however, that they simply treat the
> satellite TV feed as a singular input like any
> other source like a VCR etc. and that you are
> still chained to your receiver box. Are there
> no "satellite ready" PVR cards for the PC?

FREE-TO-AIR (FTA) SATELLITE TV
THAT IS LEGAL WITHOUT PAYING
(BUT YOU DON'T GET ALL THE CHANNELS
THAT YOU LIKE TO WATCH ON PAY TV)

Paulo also more recently wrote in where he began by saying he wanted to ask about ILLEGAL satellite TV. Please DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT ILLEGAL SATELLITE TV because I will NOT reply to you. Paulo was confused and he ended up asking another question about FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV Tuner cards. So let's first talk about FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV because most people do not understand and are confused about the difference between FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV and the pay subscription satellite TV like DirecTV or Sky TV that you pay for.

FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV is also known as FTA satellite TV. FTA satellite TV can receive free unscrambled unencrypted satellite TV channel feeds such as with C-band, Ku-band or S-band with those Big Ugly Dish (BUD) satellite TV equipment that sit in your backyard and that you have to rotate all the time to point the big dish at the right satellite to get the signal. For satellite TV Tuner cards, one example is the TWINHAN VP-1020 Card and any other similar card. I don't have satellite TV of any sort -- so you will be on your own in searching for any cards for those type of BIG ugly dish systems.

NOTE: Also, just to be clear, the TWINHAN card, and other similar cards for big dish systems, will not work to directly receive DirecTV, Dish Network, or some other small-dish DBS/DSS pay-subscription TV service.

You will most likely only find satellite TV Tuner cards that are ONLY for getting FREE-TO-AIR satellite signals. You will need a C-Band or Ku-Band or S-Band satellite dish to get satellite signals with that type of card. They will NOT be for the small satellite dish for pay subscription satellite TV. You'll also probably need a rotor for rotating and turning the satellite dish to point at the specific satellites unless if you want to point the dish at only one satellite. Also, do not expect everything with FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV:

• With FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV, you get UNENCRYPTED TV signals
• With FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV, you get NO ENCRYPTED TV from pay subscription TV services
• With FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV, the channels are NOT all the same like pay satellite subscription TV
• With FREE-TO-AIR satellite TV, do NOT expect the popular channels from pay satellite subscription TV

2. you should PAY for subscription satellite TV (legal if you PAY)

SUBSCRIPTION SATELLITE TV
THAT YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR

So, if you are otherwise asking about getting subscription TV service like from DirecTV, Dish Network (Echostar), Sky TV, or some other DBS / DSS small dish subscription satellite TV service that you have to pay for on a monthly basis, well, I really haven't found any satellite TV-ready PC-TV cards that don't require a connection to satellite TV set-top receiver box for use in the United States.

Specifically, I haven't heard of any specific TV card that works directly to receive DirecTV or DISH satellite TV broadcasts without the satellite receiver set-top box -- the problem is that you need that decoder box which does the decoding of the scrambled encrypted subscription-satellite-TV signal and I don't think DirecTV or DISH or SKY or any other pay-subscription-TV provider would want to let PC users have direct access to a decoder on a PC. You know how Hollywood doesn't like how the encryption on DVD movies and High-Def DVDs has been broken by people using the PC. They guard the decoder for pay-subscription-satellite TV much more tightly. Also look at how SLOW the cable TV companies are in allowing cable TV subscribers to have a CABLECARD (except for the new HDTV sets and Digital TV sets) where the CABLECARD is intended to replace the digital cable TV decoder boxes. Don't hold your breath for anything like a decoder for the PC. It's possible (and Microsoft may have something because of how they are working with the TV associations to allow digital cable TV and satellite TV on Microsoft Media Center PCs) but don't hold your breath until they actually come up with something that is so technologically locked down to avoid the problems that DVDs and High-Def DVDs have with people breaking the encryption. For anything like that to eventually come about, expect that it will be officially approved by the satellite and cable TV companies, that you would have pay for new expensive hardware and software, that you will have to use Windows Vista which has DRM (Digital Rights Management) locked into that operating system, and that you will still have to pay a monthly subscription fee to the satellite TV company or the cable TV company that you want to get TV service from.

Keep in mind that the underlying issue is that Hollywood and the Pay-Subscription-Satellite-TV companies like DirecTV and Sky want to be paid for their services. And there is nothing wrong with that. It's good to pay for the premium channels that you get on pay-subscription satellite TV. Meanwhile there are people who don't want to pay or who want to pay less for the fun entertaining channels that you get on pay-subscription satellite TV. So, don't be surprised that there will be obstacles in the way if you want to get a pay-subscription-satellite-TV signal into your PC.

So, the best solution appears to be getting a regular TV Tuner card and simply hooking it up to a satellite receiver box where the box does the decoding.

Keep in mind that if you want satellite TV on your PC, then you can always hook up a satellite TV set-top receiver box to a regular PC-TV Tuner card. In that sense, just about any PC-TV Tuner card is "satellite TV ready" athough you will still need to hook up the external satellite TV receiver set-top box (which decodes the satellite signal) to the TV card on the PC in order to get the satellite TV reception, change to channel 3 or channel 4 (or switch to Video In, depending on your video connection), and use the remote control for your satellite box to change the channels.

(If you have DirecTV satellite service, you could click here for the DirecTV Serial Control Utility to change channels on your DirecTV satellite box, but this software utility will not necessarily coordinate with any PVR recording software on your PC-TV system -- but if you are a C++ programmer then you can probably write another software application in C++ to have the utility work with other software on your PC. In order to use the software channel-changing utility, you will need a connection from the PC's serial port to the DirecTV satellite box -- as you can see, you still need the box.)

If you insist on getting a PC-TV Tuner card that can directly receive a signal from a satellite TV subscription service without a connection to a receiver box, then, if you are in the US, you'll have to contact DirecTV or Dish TV to find out if they have any recommendations for what PC-TV card you should use. Be prepared to be told that you will need to hook up their proprietary satellite TV receiver box to your TV or to your PC-TV card. For those folks in other countries, go contact your particular satellite TV provider in your country to find out if your provider has any specific recommendations.

Elsewhere on this website, I do mention that there are satellite cards, but there seems to be a better market for them in Europe and Asia but not in the US. When you are talking about subscription television that you pay for, the US is a cable TV country for the most part in comparison to various other countries throughout the world.

If you are looking at the page dealing with the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card, that card has an IR Blaster cable that you can use with a satellite TV box. You can click here for info about using cable / satellite boxes with that IR Blaster for the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card. Yes, you will need the box, but the IR Blaster will help you make the connection so you can also control the box from the card using the card's remote control. However, if you already have a TV Tuner card and want to add an IR Blaster, you may want to consider the Actisys IR 200L / IR220L / IR220L+ / IR220LN IrDA Com-Port Serial Adapter or the RedRat IR device to see if either one could work for you -- but either device by itself without any other support may not necessarily be able to automatically coordinate with your particular TV-PVR software on your system. Otherwise, you may want to get a new TV card that has an IR Blaster.

The market for PC-TV Tuner cards is still a niche PC market where the cards are currently dominated by cards that can be hooked up to a TV antenna, a standard cable TV connection, or to a satellite TV box, or a cable TV box. The PC-TV card manufacturer would have to set up a relationship with the satellite TV provider in order to set up the security mechanisms for receiving the satellite TV signals. I would think from either the perspective of the TV card manufacturer or the satellite TV provider in the US that it is simply easier to tell the user to hook up a box to the PC-TV card if the user wants satellite TV on the PC. Also, the manufacturer may not want to pay any licensing fees to the satellite TV provider. And the satellite TV provider wants to tell the user to get their proprietary box that the provider controls and that the provider has an investment in. Those are some factors that may give you a little bit of an indication as to possible reasons why you may find very few or simply find no PC-TV cards for directly receiving satellite TV without the need for a satellite TV set-top receiver box for subscription pay TV services such as DirecTV or Dish TV in the US -- but if you were to find such a card then expect such a card to possibly be somewhat expensive.

If there were a satellite TV-ready PC-TV Tuner card (that doesn't require a connection to a satellite TV set-top receiver box), I would think that the first place you would look to in order to get the card would be from the satellite TV provider like you would get the box from the provider. When you're talking about subcription pay television via satellite, you would have to keep in mind that satellite TV set-top receiver boxes typically have proprietary access cards with the proper codes for accessing the satellite TV signal. Those cards are updated on a regular basis by the satellite TV provider. That means you would have to be an authorized subscriber with a valid legitimate subscription to the satellite TV service. Without a valid access card containing the proper legitimately obtained subscription codes, you would get a scrambled signal. That sort of security access mechanism would have to be incorporated into the PC-TV Tuner card where the card would call the satellite TV provider on a regular basis to get the current access codes. You could imagine the possible horror that the DirecTV and Dish TV folks must feel about the thought of PC users possibly manipulating and bypassing those security mechanisms in a direct manner on an open PC. A satellite TV set-top receiver box would provide the security that the satellite TV providers would want to limit any possible illegitimate access to the subscription satellite TV service. And the mere presence of the box itself would add an extra layer of security between the PC and the service in order to block off any direct PC hacking on the security mechanism which would be bound to happen if it were inside the PC.

(Also for those asking about illegally getting satellite TV access codes or about any other illegal access, well, don't bother asking me because I would not send an email answer to you since I would not know how to get any such illegal access.)

Will we ever see satellite TV-ready PC-TV Tuner cards that don't require a connection to a satellite TV set-top receiver box in massive quantities on store shelves in the future? I don't know -- well, maybe not in the US. Of course, this could change if there was a swelling of demand for PC-TV cards that can directly receive satellite TV signals without the receiver box in the US.

However, keep in mind that you can always find PC-TV Tuner cards that you can easily hook up to a satellite TV set-top receiver box. So, for now, if you want satellite TV on your PC, hook up your satellite TV box to your PC-TV Tuner card.

Happy TV Watching!
Ruel

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NOTICE: Ruel provides many free links seen on these pages. If you buy anything, your purchases would be from a linked third-party website(s). The links are for your convenience since everyone asks for suggestions about products. The products should come with their own guarantees and warranties. As for return policies, the various online vendors who are linked should have return policies -- look at the specific vendor information carefully and decide for yourself what card, device, or other product you may want to get.