Welcome to Ku Satellites, Thursday 11th of March

Ku Satellites always wants to make sure you only get the best free-to-air receivers on the market. With over 10 years of experience, we know which brands to choose and which brands to avoid. For pricing & availability on Pansat, Viewsat and SonicView receivers, please visit our "Models & Prices" page.

	The Sonic View Premier is the latest receiver from Sonic View. It's one of the fastest free-to-air receiver on the market, with advanced blind scan capability and dozens of other state-of-the-art features.
	The Pansat 9200HD is the most reliable free-to-air receiver for C-Band & Ku-Band exploration. It is now available with an optional 8PSK module with Blind Scan capability.
	The Viewsat MaxHD brings HD television viewing to your home at a price lower than ever before with the quality you can expect from Viewsat.

Available Services

First introduced in 1994, digital reception has come a long way since its appearance in the consumer market.

The services offered through free-to-air receivers are not the same as the services offered through Star Choice and BellTV. These services are different because they are not linked to a particular broadcaster and they are free of charge. The main platform for free-to-air television in North America is the Galaxy 25 satellite.

For scrambled international services, you will need a receiver with built in Common Interface (CI) slots, that are able to accommodate the various types of decoder modules & smart cards available on the market. For subscription based services coming from Canada and the USA, please visit our Shaw Direct or Bell TV sections.

Note: If you need more information on the World Radio Network (WRN) or Radio Finland, please visit our International section.

For The Right Reason

You can select a free-to-air system based on:

The specs of the receiver

We assume that you are familiar with the requirements and availability of the service(s) you are looking for or that you only plan to use your receiver for "hobby" purposes without a specific service in mind.

The availability of a specific service (i.e. Spanish Television)

In this case we will give you some indications relative to the long-term availability of the service you are looking for and recommend a receiver, dish size and type of LNBF for reception of the service in your area. Please visit our international section for more details.

You should not get a FTA Mpeg-2 DVB system for the wrong reasons:

To get pay-TV services for free

If a service is available through Star Choice, Bell TV or a national service provider in your region, you should get it through that service provider. If the service is also available in FTA mode at the time you do your research, it may not stay this way for long...

Daily Operation

Note:All receivers come pre-programmed with transponder data from most satellites accessible in North America. Once the satellite you want has been scanned, the receiver will assign channel numbers to all the available channels. Channel names are assigned to every channel in the channel list, according to the channel information supplied in the transponder data stream. The user can assign custom channel names to any channel in the list.

For preferred channels, the receiver has a "favorite channels" list, which can be used instead of the "all channels" list.

Mpeg-2 programs are available in PAL and in NTSC. Most free-to-air receivers can either display all channel in NTSC, or in PAL, or switch between systems, according to the source signal. The conversion capability eliminates the need for a multi-system set.

Audio channels are listed in a separate channel list. The user can switch between the video channel list or the audio channel list using a key on the remote control. When multiple audio carriers (layer 1 or 2) are available with a video signal, the "audio" button lets the user switch between carrier.

For setups with multiple LNB inputs (dual Ku band, dual C band, C and Ku band), there are many possibilities to switch between the LNBs. A manual A / B switch, or a 0 / 12 V switch, or a DiSEqC switch (preferred method, with as many as 4 inputs) may be used.

If you intend to move your dish around in order to receive some of the different satellites available in the sky, you may also want to consider a DiseqC motor.

For connection diagrams, please visit the installation section of this website.

You should not consider using a free-to-air receiver if you currently have a C-Band system that is not working properly in analog mode.