DirecTV (not spam)

I have direct TV.  I love it.  

Why do we point the satellite dishes UP into space if their are no satellites in space?

FAQ: "Q: "What about satellites? How do they orbit the Earth?"

A1: They don't, satellite signals come from radio towers. "

Then why do dishes point up?  Hello?

Then why do dishes point up?  Hello?

Because the towards are not underground.

Quote from: "golphs"

Then why do dishes point up?  Hello?

Because the towards are not underground.

Can you please rephrase that?

Quote

Because the towards are not underground.

Can you please rephrase that?

Err, because the towers are not underground :P

The towers are not @ a 45 degree angle from my roof either.

What makes you think your dish needs to be pointed directly towards the device broadcasting? Sure that's what they tell you, but the radio antenna on my car recieves just fine no matter what direction the signal comes from. Maybe the dish portion of the reciever is completely superfluous; if the TV signals are coming from a radio tower, there wouldn't be much need for a focusing reflector at all, since the distances would be so much less.

And it would be very simple to program your dish to not activate unless you point it in a certain direction, thus creating the illusion of satellite requirement.

Yes, so, now every dish has a compass inside of it, and knows which direction it is pointed in. And every dish also knows what the weather is like, to tell it when its  raining so the signal can deteriorate. And why is it that if I block my satellite dish, I lose reception? Is there a camera in there too, filming for nefarious trees? Damn the government!

If you think what I proposed is unreasonable, I think you underestimate technology in general.

If you think what I proposed is unreasonable, I think you underestimate technology in general.

Oh, I am well aware of the capability. My sarcasm was intended to point out the unreasonableness of this technology existing in a satellite dish. Or at least none that I have seen or used.

Why else do you think Direct TV costs so much? They've gotta pay for all the complex components of their fake-me-out satellite recievers.

And the whole "OH IM WELL AWARE" thing will just make everyone that much more certain that you aren't.

Why else do you think Direct TV costs so much? They've gotta pay for all the complex components of their fake-me-out satellite recievers.

And the whole "OH IM WELL AWARE" thing will just make everyone that much more certain that you aren't.

I think you win this argument.

Direct TV, as a publicly held company, deceives every one of its employees and shareholders. From the ones who build the dish, with the cameras and gyroscopes, to the manufacturers in China who spec the dishes with the secret, mysterious antennae lead, to the engineers, who feign knowledge of satellite transmission, to the field technicians, who install the network to spy on its customer's dishes, not one who knows the truth is spilling it, instead they are creating fictional radio towers to transmit their television signals on unallocated bands of publicly owned FCC spectrum, which I'm sure is allocated in some unknown band for secret government purposes, so that people can think that there are satellites, and maintain a facade of a round earth. Yup, you win.

Cool.

For the amount of data we send and recieve, simple radio towers would have to all be in line-of-sight, and there would have to be sheer dickloads of them. Here in Perth, there isnt much in the way of huge radio towers. There's the occassional mobile phone microwave towers, but if you wanted to have a whole array of such things active all over the planet to transmit mass data constantly, not only would the setup cost be huge and a fair percentage of the planet taken up by radio installations now, but the radiation from so many towers transmitting microwave and radio waves horizontally across the surface would surely kill us.

I just went out and took a photo of my dish on my roof. I would post it up but I CBF, if you really want it ill put it up. But essentially its a small coaxial feed that goes into a reciever box (and no, in that reciever there is nothing that could make the dish only work if its pointed in the right direction etc, its merely a small signal amplifier). Then theres a reciever on a long stalk, that picks up the reflected signal from that dish.
The way a microwave dish such as this works, is that a signal must be beamed directly at it; or more accurately, in its general direction, but still has to recieve on the large flat surface of it. (figure a)
A horizontal microwave signal would not be recieved, as the dish would simply reflect the signal away from the reciever (figure b)




If you where to relate this to your idea of a government ice bubble over us, you could say that they have placed transmitters on the roof of the bubble so the signal beams down as it would from a sattelite. That would make some sense, because a controlling body wouldnt want all their minions to be baked by microwave radiation, but then you go into things like sattelite phones, and GPS's, that only get reception when the sattelites are directly overhead. When they arent in recieving range (as they are on the other side of the planet, or not in an effective line of sight), the device doesnt work.
It has to be said we do have sattelites orbiting the earth, as this is the only feasible way to get this technology to work.


And just to point out, the signal your car gets on its antenna is a totally different signal a sattelite dish recieves.

and for anyone who even THINKS of saying "how do you know the light bounces that way" - please, revise what you learnt in year 10 science.

im pretty sure my porn comes from a sattelite

the problem is they all think that science education is part of the conspiracy. Some people have some crazy arse insecurity complexes.



I also wanted to point out, that with the dish, the coaxial line goes straight into the house, runs into a signal box (pay TV), which then runs another coaxial feed into the television.
Now, the signal box is simply a decoder. The dish picks up a massive amount of data, the signal box simply decodes it into channels, audio, and visual. New Digital boxes have more features.

But essentially what im getting at is in no part of the system is anything that could;

a) transmit data back out of the dish. The reciever is exactly that: a reciever. It does not have the physical ability to transmit a signal.

or b) detect which way the dish is pointed. The dish sits on an aluminum rod thats bolted to the roof. Theres nothing else. It wouldnt be "very simple" to "program" your dish to only activate when its pointed in a certain direction at all.


if you think that sattelite dishes are part of the conspiracy, then obviously youve never had anything more to do with television than watch it.

The signals don't have to come from towers, think 'lighter-than-air vehicles'.

hot air ballons now? They would have to be pretty big to be able to carry the sort of broadcasting equipment we're talking about. It takes millions of pounds of rocket thrust to get the weight of that gear into space and into a propper orbit; sattelites arent just light little antennas. You would need HUGE amounts of energy just to keep it up there. Not to mention if you did have huge floating transmitter balloons you would see them at day time and not at night time, which is opposite to how it actually works.

And then, orbiting sattelites are solar powered, and can run very high outputs through this as theres no atmosphere blocking the radiation that the panels absorb. If you where to have these things inside of an atmosphere, or moreso, a ice dome (lol!) you wouldnt get anywhere near enough radiation to create a charge. You'd need huge arrays of solar panels and huge battery banks. Wind power would require even heavier alternators and gearbox systems, and still requires huge battery banks.
Unless you have a perpetual energy device that has a negative mass, i really dont think its very plausible to have permanent transmitting hot air balloons, or any flying vehicle inside of the atmosphere. Space is great because you put stuff there and it doesnt come down for a long time.

I said nothing about hot air balloons.  I like how you are so feverently against this, even though it happens on the RE...   :?

read the whole comment before trying to contradict me.

How about reading my post.
*edit*  I get scolded for not reading a part of your post you edited in after I made my comment? :?

lol dont try to start a childish argument like that.
You say 'lighter than air vehicle'. Ive just told you that you wont be able to have an inconspicuous vehicle capable of supporting that sort of equipment that flies inside our own atmosphere. I dont know if youve ever looked at a transmitting station, but they require enormous amounts of power, and have a huge mass.


edit: sorry bout that

Here in Perth, there isnt much in the way of huge radio towers. There's the occassional mobile phone microwave towers,

Anywhere a cell phone works, radio tower TV will work.

(and no, in that reciever there is nothing that could make the dish only work if its pointed in the right direction etc, its merely a small signal amplifier).

You don't have any proof of this.

Then theres a reciever on a long stalk, that picks up the reflected signal from that dish.

Duh, that's what they want you to think.

The way a microwave dish such as this works, is that a signal must be beamed directly at it; or more accurately, in its general direction, but still has to recieve on the large flat surface of it. (figure a)

No, the way a parabolic reciever dish works is that a signal will be amplified considerably if it is recieved at the correct angle such that the focus of the reflection is on the reciever. The reason we have these reflector dishes set up is because of a thing called free space loss, which is directly proportional to the distance you're transmitting over; in other words, if you've got a signal 250 miles away (satellite), you might need a reciever with a 30 decible analog gain, whereas a signal coming from 10 miles (radio tower) could get away without any gain from the physical reciever. I'm saying the dish on your roof operates on the same principles as your car radio, and it doesn't need a reflector at all. They just put that there for show.

A horizontal microwave signal would not be recieved, as the dish would simply reflect the signal away from the reciever (figure b)

Again, what you mean to say is that a horizontal signal would not be taking advantage of the physical properties of the reflector dish in terms of amplification of the signal. I'm saying it doesn't need that amplification.

When they arent in recieving range (as they are on the other side of the planet, or not in an effective line of sight), the device doesnt work.
It has to be said we do have sattelites orbiting the earth, as this is the only feasible way to get this technology to work.

That would be true on a round earth. Luckily on a flat earth, line of sight issues are a lot easier to deal with.

And just to point out, the signal your car gets on its antenna is a totally different signal a sattelite dish recieves.

Debateable.

Ha ha, Busted.

You know, it not only with satellite dishes like that. Early cell phones had huge antennas, cuz people were used to antennas, and everything had an antenna at that time. If they had sold cell phones without antennas people would have been suspicious. So they mounted huge extendable antennas on it. Over the years they slightly shrinked the size of the antennas till they were nonexistent. They then told everyone it's in the chip now. ("it's in the chip!").

Great huh?

Now I tell you that whole satellite dish thing’s bogus as well. You only have to wait a few years, the dishes will shrink and one day they'll hand you a little plug you have to mount on the wall. "No, dishes are outdated, it's in the chip".

:-D

"You don't have any proof of this. "

I don't see you bringing up anything to the contrary. In fact, me existing kinda disproves most of your entire theory. Except for the government conspiracy stuff, which I'll address now:

"Duh, that's what they want you to think. "

Pulling that phrase back out is like expecting people to laugh at a "Why did the chicken cross the road joke". Once again, it's a blank instant fire contradiction to someone's argument. The most terrible thing is that I've seen no evidence of a conspiracy. More to the point - people don't care if there is a government conspiracy. All we know is that oil is going up, our atmosphere is going away, and things are getting hotter. You don't need a conspiracy to ruin things.

Ach, anyway, back on topic.
The reason there is no conpiracy is - people know they exist. People in the higher-up scheme of things are thinking ahead about decisions they make about the world all the time - it's called conscience. It's what being a sentient being is all about. We know enough about humanity now that there is always going to be deceit, greed, murder and secrecy. It's the trademark of civillization.

note - civillization does not include intelligence.

"You don't have any proof of this. "

I don't see you bringing up anything to the contrary. In fact, me existing kinda disproves most of your entire theory. Except for the government conspiracy stuff, which I'll address now:

I don't need to. I'm proposing a model by which you could recieve "satellite TV" without the existence of satellites. I'm not trying to prove it is the case in real life, I am trying to prove it is a valid model. If you don't think my model is valid, the disproof is up to you.

"Duh, that's what they want you to think. "

Pulling that phrase blah blah blah

Tongue in cheek. For most people the "duh" would give it away.

Ach, anyway, back on topic.

...he says as he proceeds further and further off topic...

People in the higher-up scheme of things are thinking ahead about decisions they make about the world all the time - it's called conscience.

Which is why my aliens theory works so well. I propose that aliens told the government that, if they tell the world that the earth is flat, they will blow up our planet. No "higher up" would dare risk that, no matter how greedy he is.

So anyways, back to the subject. Someone argue with me about signal processing or something.

DANGIT! I KNOW WHEN IM BEING PATRONISED!

...

So, what many are saying here is that there is NO NEED for a dish?

-And that the reason it has to be pointed within certain angles is because the world is flat, and Directv is in on the gov't conspiracy?

OK.

2x a year I have to jump up on the roof and jolt the dish a little bit to get it pointed the right way to pick up the signal.  The logical reason for this would be to say, "tilting of the earth on it's axis".   It's just easier, you know.

So, what many are saying here is that there is NO NEED for a dish?

-And that the reason it has to be pointed within certain angles is because the world is flat, and Directv is in on the gov't conspiracy?

OK.

2x a year I have to jump up on the roof and jolt the dish a little bit to get it pointed the right way to pick up the signal.  The logical reason for this would be to say, "tilting of the earth on it's axis".   It's just easier, you know.

Stop making sense.