What is Satellite Free-To-Air (FTA)?
Satellite Free-To-Air (FTA) is basically the collection of all channels that are possible to receive without subscription. This is not an organised service like Irish DTT, Freesat or Freeview rather a description for the use of a standard DVB-S satellite set top box to receive these FTA channels. As all the freesat channels are FTA you can pick all of these channels up with an FTA receiver but there are other channels not carried on the Freesat program guide that can be picked up on a satellite FTA receiver. There are limitations of satellite FTA over organised services like Freesat. For UK FTA channels you will only get Now and Next information on programming as opposed to 7 day listings on freesat. Also, red button type features are not available generally on FTA boxes. Note that there are different FTA receivers that are close to being able to interpret the freesat 7 day EPG. Also, FTA boxes have to be manually tuned and configured which is not required on freesat boxes. If a channe
