WHAT IS FREE TO AIR(FTA)?
FTA or “Free To Air” simply means that the signal is not encrypted. Most cable type programming is encrypted. Where did all of these FREE TO AIR receivers come from? While the U.S. and Canadian Cable industry distributes their programming largely via products sold by Motorola and a few others, the rest of the world chose the MPEG-2 format. Granted, even though, the Motorola Digicipher II has some MPEG-2 attributes, it nevertheless remains a totally proprietary platform. Who has chosen MPEG-2 as a platform? Dish Network, Scientific Atlanta, and the rest of the world. Even DirecTV is a early version of MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is a digital platform that allows several digital broadcasts to be compressed onto one frequency or channel. Without MPEG-2, Digicipher, or other compression platform, it would not be possible to have direct broadcast television services like DirecTV or Dish Network. Equally important is the way the programmers get the their product to their retail outlets such as DBS and ca
