We are not giving this new site any free promotion by mentioning its name, suffice to say, they have 20 posts and a thousand members.

The small Nfusion Site claiming to have big news, had nothing but a server that was crashing all day long with nothing to note. They once had a banner displaying big news, it has since been removed.

Time and Time again in the FTA Industry people make big claims, and it turns out to be nothing at all. At GoodFTA we will always tell you the truth behind all of the worries and concerns of FTA!

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GoodFTA is the leading provider of FTA Support on the internet! We have dozens of FTA Instructional videos that show you how to setup, scan and fix common FTA Receivers, such as CNX, Viewsat, i-Link, Sonicview, Nfusion, and more! We also have videos to help you understand common FTA Equipment like DISEQ Switches, Coax Cable, LNBS, Satellite Dishes and more. While other sites may offer videos, they just show ours, we are the LEADING provider in FTA Videos, bar none.

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April 10, 2009

For many Dish Network customers today is really a “Good Friday” as last night they gained 7 new national HD channels.

The new channels launched were Spike HD, CMT HD, Comedy Central HD, MTV HD, VH1 HD, Nick HD ad BET HD. Also in a surprise move Dish Network also added popular teen network “The N” to their lineup. Perhaps now Dish Network will offer The N and the popular pre school channel Noggin as separate channels. (Updated – Dish Network added BET HD on Friday Afternoon)

And while many people are very happy with the additions to Dish Network there are some customers who are upset over the additions. It appears that a number of these new channels (Nick HD, MTV HD and VH1 HD) are not available to Dish Networks HD only “TurboHD” customers.

This is not the first time Dish Networks “TurboHD” customers were passed over for new HD. Earlier this year Dish launched Fox News HD and Fox Business HD and failed to make the Fox News channels available to their HD only customers.

The launch of these channels comes 8 days late as Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen announced on his March “Charlie Chat” that these channels were going to launch “by April 1st.”

And while the channels launched late many HD fans seemed quick to forgive the nations second largest satellite provider by reporting that HD shows such as South Park and TNA Wrestling looked great last night on Dish Network.

The marketing calls were made to some consumers who signed up for the Federal Trade Commission’s national do-not-call registry to fend off unwanted sales pitches, the agency said.

“Because a few bad actors still don’t get it, we want to make it crystal clear. If you call consumers whose numbers are on the Do Not Call Registry, you’re breaking the law,” said Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC’s consumer protection unit.

Dish Network said the company obeyed the law and should not be held responsible for violations by independent retailers.

“An independent audit demonstrates that DISH Network is in compliance with ‘do-not-call’ laws, has proper controls in place, and is well within the safe-harbor provisions of the law,” the Englewood, Colorado-based company said in a statement.

“We also believe that the FTC is equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to ‘causing’ or ‘assisting and facilitating’ violations by that retailer,” Dish Network said. “We look forward to resolving these differences of opinion through the judicial process.”

The FTC said the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Springfield, Illinois and was joined by state attorneys general from California, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina.

The federal lawsuit seeks to stop Dish from making the calls either directly or indirectly through its dealers, asks for unspecified civil penalties and asks that the company be required to enforce compliance with the do-not-call registry regulations. Two other related lawsuits were also filed against two of Dish Network’s authorized dealers, the agency said.

The FTC’s do-not-call registry became effective in 1995, allowing consumers to register their telephone numbers without charge. Telemarketers can access the registry via the Internet but are prohibited from calling the phone numbers.

Dish provides service to more than 13.7 million satellite television customers.

Federal Trade Commission v Dish Network, U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois, No. 09-03073.

The new Fandango iPhone application will offer users many of the same abilities. The free application will not only allow users to view movie listings at nearby theaters, but will allow movie fans to get information on movies which are “Coming Soon”. This includes the ability to watch trailers and read a synopses of the movie.

His weapon of choice is an unassuming, pizza-sized satellite dish that can literally harpoon signals from space – and provide lucrative and illicit profit.

And it’s happening across the country. The Canadian Motion Pictures Distribution Association estimates that the total loss to the industry from satellite piracy in 2001 alone was about $1 billion – and that number is likely far higher today.

But lately, satellite companies, including Bell ExpressVu and U.S.-based DISH Network have been fighting back. The companies are switching to a tough new encryption system while using the threat of court action to target end users.

“We take this very seriously and we have taken a number of actions to counter signal theft,” Bell spokesperson Julie Smithers said. Satellite companies like to remind users that theft of signal not only means less subscription revenue for providers, but a fall in ratings for stations which translates into lost advertising revenue, and for artists who are given a portion of profits from subscriptions through the Canadian Television Fund.

Los Angeles-based media analysts The Carmel Group estimates there are at least two million illegal television households in the U.S. and Canada, out of a universe of about 15 million legal households. And the number is growing exponentially.

In the digital age, pirates are likely to look a lot like James, a middle- aged Toronto engineer with two children who happens to enjoy watching the Tennis Channel.

“I can’t believe I was actually paying for cable before,” he enthuses. James has access to a universe of more than 200 channels, including current pay-per-view movies that are only available at the video store for a cost. Last summer he put up a second satellite at his cottage, with a dish and receiver from a computer store in downtown Toronto that he purchased for less than $200.

James is currently watching a live tennis match in his living room which is decorated with trophies from his local club. Flipping through channels on a black set-top box reveals that he has fully unscrambled access to dozens of Hollywood movies (currently playing are The Dark Knight and Milk) for which legitimate subscribers have to pay up to $5.99 each.

At the heart of the problem are “Free To Air” satellite receivers that are widely available throughout Canada. While the possession of the equipment is not a crime, modifying it to access subscription signals is.

Free to Air is a system widely available in Europe, where television and radio broadcasts are typically sent unencrypted. There are some 250 Free to Air channels in North America, typically for ethnic programming.

“The way piracy works in North America is when consumers turn their Free to Air receivers into Free to Air units that steal,” says a Carmel Group report.

A USB port on the system allows consumers to change the internal programming of the module after downloading software from the Internet.

“What the manufacturers and retailers are doing may not be illegal, but it is wilful blindness,” argues Luc Perrault, co-chair of the Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft and a vice-president of the Weather Network. “These things are being imported by the container load into Canada and it’s a serious issue.”

The coalition, which represents Canadian cable and satellite providers is lobbying government to toughen laws against piracy, including harsher sentences for pirates.

There have been some charges, but they aren’t coming quickly enough for the industry. Chris Frank, vice-president of programming for Bell ExpressVu, says the company has “done everything to ensure the integrity of our platform. Secret services around the world spend billions of dollars upgrading encryption systems to make sure their data is secure,” he told the Star’s Chris Sorensen last year. “We are a commercial company, we can’t spend billions, but we spend what it takes within reasonable bounds.”

Frank would not say how many people steal from Bell only that it was “speculative to try and figure it out. But the illegal reception is well within industry bounds.”

So far, Bell’s electronic countermeasures with a new encryption route introduced last November, seem to be working, blocking access to many channels. DISH Network is also in the process of migrating to the new system.

But hackers have been here before. Hacker groups are currently working on the new system, and some feel it is only a matter of time before the code is broken.

Meanwhile, one final route that would have a powerful deterrent effect is to go after consumers who steal signal.

In a get-tough policy, Bell has targeted end users by threatening legal action against customers who have been sold FTA receivers and are registered members of websites that promote piracy.

“We are contacting you because the operation or possession of illegal signal theft equipment to access Bell ExpressVu’s programming constitutes a violation,” says a letter sent to customers of a distributor selling satellite equipment.

The letter states that Bell is willing to drop legal proceedings if the user pays a $1,000 fine and hands over the equipment to Bell.

But the new tactics aren’t scaring some pirates.

“They’ll have to pry the remote control out of my hands before I give it up,” says James.

The new technology is a step towards the creation of computer hard drives with no moving parts, which would be much faster, less expensive and use less energy than current ones. In the future, the new battery could be developed to power cars.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

The device created by University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes, of the College of Arts and Sciences and his collaborators can store energy in magnets rather than through chemical reactions. Like a winding up toy car, the spin battery is “wound up” by applying a large magnetic field — no chemistry involved. The device is potentially better than anything found so far, said Barnes.

“We had anticipated the effect, but the device produced a voltage over a hundred times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected,” Barnes said. “That this was counterintuitive is what lead to our theoretical understanding of what was really going on.”

The secret behind this technology is the use of nano-magnets to induce an electromotive force. It uses the same principles as those in a conventional battery, except in a more direct fashion. The energy stored in a battery, be it in an iPod or an electric car, is in the form of chemical energy. When something is turned “on” there is a chemical reaction which occurs and produces an electric current. The new technology converts the magnetic energy directly into electrical energy, without a chemical reaction. The electrical current made in this process is called a spin polarized current and finds use in a new technology called “spintronics.”

The new discovery advances our understanding of the way magnets work and its immediate application is to use the MTJs as electronic elements which work in different ways to conventional transistors. Although the actual device has a diameter about that of a human hair and cannot even light up an LED (light-emitting diode–a light source used as electronic component), the energy that might be stored in this way could potentially run a car for miles. The possibilities are endless, Barnes said.

“There are magnets hidden away in many things, for example there are several in a mobile telephone, many in a car, and they are what keeps your refrigerator closed,” he said. “There are so many that even a small change in the way we understand of how they work, and which might lead to only a very small improvement in future machines, has a significant financial and energetic impact.”

The picture perfect launch took place at 7:45 PM and lit up the nights sky.

Testing of the new satellite took place at the 138 degree orbital location and from everything I have been told the testing went extremely well.

The new satellite will give Dish Network customers a better signal (especially on the West Coast, as the current satellite at the 129 location has been an issue for customers in the West and down South. In addition the CIEL II satellite introduces spotbeam technology to the 129 orbital location. This spotbeam technology will allow Dish Network to roll out HD locals to many cities which currently do not get HD locals from Dish Network. With these new spotbeams it will free up conus satellite transponders which can be used by Dish Network to offer more national programming including new national HD channels.

And while the satellite is at its new home don’t expect Dish Network to flip a switch and light up a bunch of new services all at once, in fact it could be days or weeks before customers see anything new from the new satellite. Before the satellite can be used a few more tests are needed and any final tweaking of the satellite will need to be done. After this is complete then Dish will start transferring programming from the old satellite to the new one. When this happens many customers will notice an increase of signal quality from the 129 orbital location. Once the moves start then you can expect Dish to start adding HD locals markets taking advantage of the satellites spot beam technology.

Welcome home CIEL II, a lot of folks have been waiting for you to come home for a long time now!