Primestar question.

[music_beans]

I wonder what channels you would get if you hooked up a P* dish and reciever? (I know P* has been gone for years, but since I see old primestar dishes almost every day, I wonder what they would get from AMC3 on their P* IRD)

[Jacob S]

More than likely nothing. I did hear a while back that there were a few FTA channels that could be picked up using that receiver, I think they were a few christian channels and maybe a few foreign ones.

[Steve Mehs]

I brought this up a while ago. A P* receiver is useless, the dish however can be used for ku/ka content. You can hook a FTA receiver up to it and point at the different satellites and gets all the free religious and foreign programming you want :)

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=2535&highlight=primestar

If you're interested go to lyngsat.com and see what programming it out there. This stuff is great for the hobbyist, and I'm still interested in it after I get some things paid off.

[Mike Richardson]

It really sucks how Primestar receivers are all junk. eBay sees hundreds of them a month and usually maybe several sell and they all sell for less than 5 dollars. Maybe there's some part inside P* receiver that is expensive on it's own so people just buy a receiver for a buck and take out the part?

Those Primestar dishes, though, they usually go for at least 50 dollars.

[Ku Man]

Those Primestar dishes, though, they usually go for at least 50 dollars.

The dishes can be used with FTA or Globecast receivers on T5 and on FTA G10 Ku. And of course, they can be used for Star Choice.

[boba]

Primestar receivers used Digicipher encription which is different from the DigicipherII used on Ku band it was an addressable system that might still have some commercial users but no free services.

[music_beans]

I thought the P* recievers would work fine for FTA content since there are many mid-band digital FTA channels on different satellites.

[Jacob S]

If the channels that are FTA are running at the same frequency that the receiver is on then it should work. I would not know what channel to turn it on or if it would say it was picking up a signal though or if it had to use the same encryption. I wonder if some are modifying these receivers to pick up FTA channels.

[721 user]

It's been awhile since I installed my last PrimeStar but I think P* used V&H polarity rather than the circular polarity that DISH and DTV uses.

[Jacob S]

I have seen a few Primestar lnbf's that had V&H both on one line but not many at all.