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Meridian Satellite TV
Services for Colorado Front Range - Including Denver, Colorado Springs, Monument, Woodland Park, and Pueblo |
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NOTICE: Recent Nagra 3 (N3) Encryption Another option for those who have lost their FTA TV reception due to the Nagra 3 (N3) switchover is to get a new ethernet-based IKS hub using a Conaxsat (CNX), Nfusion, K-Box, or Sonicview receiver (soon to be available for other receivers). 
FTA viewing for now requires IKS server-based channel keyword (CW) updates via an Ethernet Dongle (such as the Sonicview iHub)
for viewing with a Free To Air (FTA) receiver. If your choice is to continue with FTA TV viewing however, it will cost approximately $260.00
(incl. Sonicview 360 Elite receiver, plus iHub dongle), or ~$510 if using a Slinger and production hardware with a card slot. This
IKS path includes access to all channels including PPV.Contact us for other posible solutions for this type of application. If you already own a production receiver, call us to determine if it can be modified for use with the Slinger option. 
It will require your shipping the unit to our partner location for modification. They will modify the unit and return it with a Slinger
unit allowing for its immediate use. If you already have a K-box, Nfusion, Sonicview 360 elite or premier receiver,
then you only have the cost of the dongle (iHub), configuration, and Internet-based access to the key server. At this point the
Sonicview and K-Box receivers are confirmed opperational with use of their respective iHub dongles.
CNX Dongle (IKS for the NANO), IKSlinger 2.02 (Up on Adult + PPV?), K-Box K-Hub (New Files 6/26), Nfusion IKS DN + BEV (-NOVA 07/11)!, Sonicview iHub (New Files/Updated Channels 7/11)
OK I'm sold. Tell me what I really need to do get TV again If this key is not made available every 15 seconds, the video and audio freezes (scrambles) and the channel being viewed goes black. The needed codeword (key) can be made available through what is called Internet Key Sharing (IKS), this key is only available through access to a public or private server that is connected to one of more receivers that are subscribed to the provider. The subscriptions are 'shared' for use by other IKS capable receivers that are connected to a specific key server via the Internet. The key server basically 'serves' the keywords required for each channel to display and not go black before the 15 second time limit expires. The drawback here is that if the server does not transmit a codeword in time, or the router does not receive it within the time interval, or the Internet connection goes down, the display will freeze until the correct codeword arrives and is processed. If the key is not received after 30 seconds the screen goes black entirely. With so many channels to process, and potential server clients connected, you can now understand why a high speed connection is required on the client side. Want to avoid all this?? Subscribe and become a Dish Network, DirecTV, or Cable TV customer.
To see Satellite TV without a subscription will require the following:
Slinger can support the following production receivers: 322, 522, 625, 721, 921, 942, 3200, 5200, 9200, VIP222, VIP622, VIP9242, 111, 311, 811, 4100, 6100, VIP211, VIP411, and ViP722 If you own any of these receivers contact us and we'll arrange to get it modified for access with the Slinger module. Purchase of a Slinger Client for each receiver will be required. Payment for services and product required in advance. If you live in Colorado, we can also arrange for home or office installation of your equipment at the rate of $35/hr plus any trip charge. So what is Free-to-Air(FTA)? Asia and the Pacific Rim were the first places in which Free-To-Air satellite reception was first used on a large scale. The difference between those markets and North America was that prior to the mid 90s, it took a very large antenna (greater than 6 ft wide) installed at a home backyard to get even a few dozen channels (installing at an RV was improbable, if not impossible)...making TV reception of many channels an impossible dream. The MPEG-2 technology was a breakthrough that allowed great reductions in per-channel transmission costs and allowed for reception at home or RV due to the small diameter dish or oval antenna requirements. 
The Asia-Pacific market was a test bed on how to get digital satellite
transmission and reception right, with costs coming down due to companies from the Far East trying to compete for the huge mainland Chinese market. The markets later florished in Europe, and now in North America.
Dish Network and DirecTV currently dominate the Satellite TV subscription market, using
a slightly different transmission and reception technology.Hyundai was the first receiver brought into the U.S., with its early versions of the HSS-100 series of receivers. Wholesale cost was around $700, it had a limited memory, which translated to no more than 99 groups of channels, and the graphics only worked in the PAL video format.  Viewing on our NTSC format
required a direct connection to a VCR or monitor and some
programming tricks to "make" an NTSC picture. We have come a long
ways in the last few years, with many significant improvements in
design of receivers, and great increases in memory capacity and
speed. MPEG-2 is a worldwide satellite transmission standard for digital broadcasting. It is the wave of the future, because of the simple economics that can allow 8 or even 10 video signals to occupy the same space as one channel of analog transmission. Just as some analog signals can be scrambled for subscription use, digital channels can be transmitted either scrambled or in-the-clear. In-The-Clear is known in the digital TV world as FTA or Free-To-Air. Since it is a worldwide standard, there are more MPEG-2/DVB (digital video broadcasting) channels available in places such as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, than presently found in the American market. National public broadcasters in other parts of the world have adopted MPEG-2 as a cost-effective way to distribute their signals on limited budgets. The spread of free MPEG-2 signals into North America had been hampered by the dominance of the Digicipher 2 video standard made by the former General Instruments (now Motorola Broadband) group. Receivers such as 4DTV and other versions of the Digicipher 2 actually have the letters MPEG-2 stamped on them, but these receivers are not compatible with the rest of the world. The difference comes in the way that signals are layered together, especially in the encryption process. A great number of the channels available in Free-To-Air in MPEG-2 are mostly available from other countries. Such availability is contingent upon somebody paying the bill for satellite transmission across the ocean, and then re-transmitting to the North American market. In some cases, the North American signal is made available on one of the small-dish systems such as DirecTV or DISH Network for a monthly fee, but the incoming feed from overseas is left in the clear. The reason is primarily economic, with the logic that very few people will go to the trouble of installing a large C-band antenna in this day and age to view one free channel, when they can have it delivered by alternative methods for what some might consider to be a reasonable fee. Problem is that this "free" reception sometimes gets too popular, and the bean counters at DISH Network decide to encode the incoming international feeds, thus forcing all to subscribe. This happened recently with Polish services, then Russian, and who knows what next. So what is IKS? IKS (Internet Key Sharing) is the latest method in the FTA (Free-To-Air) satellite community that tackles the problem of the new Nagravision 3 encryption technology by supplying decryption keys to a FTA Satelite receiver over the Internet. While some are reasonably wary of IKS technology, most use some sort of proxy server to act as a protection of a users real ip address, just in case authorities or satellite providers may be monitoring the connections to a central server or array of IKS servers. There are several brands now supporting a present or future IKS solution. Some require the purchase of a special device (known as n iHub, or Dongle) specifically designed to expand a boxes capabilities to use the new IKS FTA method. Currently IKS has been limited to non-pay-per-view subscription only programming. Other boxes (known as Slinger boxes) have built in support for the technogy. How does IKS work with FTA? Well to make it easy to understand, a receiver is configured with the IP address of a remote server on the internet where a system is setup to capture the decryption keys being received by another receiver who is receiving subscribed channels. The keys are sent by a card sharing server back over the internet to receivers connected to the server. A receiver that is connected via an ip proxy to the server is then able to open or unlock the channel for viewing locally, through use of IKS.
Need Help? Call 719-243-8985, or toll free 1-866-942-7186; promo code: 29308 Order your Free-To-Air (FTA) with our
Meridian Satellite TV Online partner >> |
