What is C band

[sancraft]

I've heard about this c band satellite tv. Does anyone have it? Does it save you money? Is it widely available? Trying to find a low cost way to have tv at the new cabin.

We use c band and love it. It has largely been replaced by the small dishes and I don't understand why. On c band you can buy individual channels instead of a package that always includes stuff you don't want. Our small dish programming for the middle package was 418.00 a year. On c band the wife and I got our channels for 110.00 a year. That included cartoon network and nickelodeon for the grandkids, Home and garden, A+E, TBS, Fox/CNN News, Family, tv land, USA and AMC. A+E and home and garden are going digital so you may want to buy a digital receiver. Programming is available through National Programming Service, and they have a web site with the per channel price. When a tree limb damaged our dish, I got on Freecycle and posted for a new one. I must have had 30 replies from people wanting to give them away and some included the receiver.

[Bresias]

I am pretty uninformed about c satellite. Are those big "old fashioned" sat dishes associated with c band?

[mike3367]

cband is the 8 foot dish not the 18 inche dish you see most with like the one post said for the cheapest tv cband best cuz you can alcart your channels it only cost me 48 bucks a year for my channels so im not complaining about my bill. www.skyvision.com good place to go for cband stuff too

[gilberte]

We've had C-Band for about 10 years and we like it. We can buy the programming we want, when we want it (for the most part). If we decide we want the 'Discovery Channel' for a month we can get it with no extra connect or disconnect charges. Everything doesn't come al a carte though, if we wanted 'The Food Channel' we would have to buy an expensive digital package. Our programming supplier tells me that they are working on this though.

Of course the system is yours and initial costs and upkeep are yours also. If there is a problem you don't just call the cable guy. We've learned enough about our system over the years that we can pretty much take care of it ourselves.

If you start looking for used equipment I would stay away from the analog receivers as there isn't much available on them, a 4dtv receiver is the way to go (there is a bit of a learning curve here and you must do your research).

[Janon]

I'm Canadian and I legally hack into Dishnetwork satellite - the only cost is the cost of the equipment (under $150). I get over 600 channels and all PPV movies/Sports. I've been doing this for many years.

Check your laws. Because you're American, you may be able to legally hack into Bell ExpressVu (Canadian Satellite TV) for about the same price.

cheers,