How Do Free-to-Air Receivers Work?

How FTA Is Delivered

Free-to-air receivers are essentially satellite dishes much like those offered by DirectTV and DishNetwork. The dishes pick up satellite signals in the same manner as a typical satellite dish while delivering the signal to the user's television.

FTA Operates Via Unencrypted Signals

Free-to-air receivers search for unencrypted satellite signals that have been passed along to the receiver. These signals feature the MPEG-2/DVB-S and MPEG-4/DVB-S2 formats, although analog signals were once used but have been phased out in many countries including the United States. The FTA simply takes these signals and decodes them for playback via the user's television.

Mainstream Uses

The uses for FTA vary widely; however, most mainstream offerings include major networks in several countries with more countryside--for instance, the BBC and BBC2 networks in Europe run on FTA, while Germany also uses FTA to transmit major stations. FTA is also used by many ethnic channels to broadcast their programs to U.S. customers from their native countries without enormous fees being imposed, while several large religious networks also provide FTA programming. Finally, educational programming, including PBS shows beamed to schools for free viewsing, is also a mainstay of FTA.