When a person goes home after having a tiresome day, often the first thing they does is switch on the television. This, we all know. Though has anyone ever wondered how many people actually pay for watching cable? The average price for satellite subscription, from major providers such as Bell and Rogers, is around $34 CAD (About 33 USD). For those who are already earning very little, these $34 are a killer. Thus the need to watch TV without the crippling fees gave birth to Free-To-Air Satellite Programming.

FTA are television programs that are sent via unencrypted channels and can be easily viewed by any suitable receiver. They are generally available free of charge and without any sort of subscription. Some broadcasters encrypt their signals so as to make sure it is not viewed beyond a certain geographical area. Do note, though, that none of the FTAs are pay-TV or pay-per-view.

Although termed as free, they often require some sort of payment to be accessed. The BBC(British Broadcastign Corporation), for example, requires the purchase of a TV license. This also allows purcahsers to watch terrestrial channels, too. (This TV licence is compulsory in the United Kingdom.) Some TV channels are being paid for by the sponsorships and advertisements while some welcome any and all sort of donations to keep broadcasting. In Canada, CBC television is the second channel in North America to be funded by tax-payers money. The other FTA which is government funded is the Doordarshan Channel and its several subsequent channels that are being paid for by the Government of India run Prasar Bharti.

Another way that a person can view FTA is by downloading cracked firmware for their set-top boxes. All different brands of set-top box manufacturers require different firmware, but the fact is, in such cases, is that they are illegal to keep! What they do is take up the memory, in box, that is reserved for keeping the Electronic Programming Guide and put new decryption software and codes so that even the encrypted channels are easily decrypted and viewed by a person for absolutely no charge at all. These firmware do, however, tend to have a very short life as they need to be updated almost every second week. This is so because the broadcasters tend to change the encryption keys and their various methods of encryption after a specific period of time has passed.

This my friends, is the story of free TV!