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| C-Band satellite dish |
Ever been driving in the countryside and spot one of those big, ugly satellite dishes in someone's yard and wonder what the hell they're using it for? (It's not to communicate with aliens). Chances are, it's not being used anymore, BUT not only did they serve a purpose years ago, they still have a valid use case today.
In North America (and the rest of the world), C-Band satellite signals (and its little sibling Ku-band) are primarily used for backhaul feeds, which, in short, is a way for broadcasters to transmit content not yet meant for viewing from consumers. For example, on Super Bowl Sunday, the production crew on-site will uplink this "backhaul" feed to one of the North American satellites, only for it to bounce back to the broadcaster where they finish production (adding commercials, finalizing the audio mix, applying compression, etc.). Nowadays, these feeds are usually encrypted (more on that later), so the average Joe won't be able to watch the content, but this wasn't always the case.
In the 80s and 90s, broadcasters were using this technology without applying encryption, also know as free-to-air television (FTA). As such, if you had the means (and the know-how) to set up one of these big ugly dishes, you could get access to virtually any television channel and backhaul feed. You could find news anchors, reporters, or sports commentators talking on a hot mic, being none the wiser that these transmissions were in the clear.
Eventually, broadcasters and TV providers caught on and started applying encryption (AKA signal scrambling) as a form of DRM, much to the dismay of satellite enthusiasts, such as Captain Midnight, who hijacked HBO's Galaxy 1 satellite signal after the company enabled encryption on their channels. This trend would continue and slowly but surely, C-Band dishes have fallen out of favor with the majority of Americans.
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| Captain Midnight's friendly message to HBO subscribers (with a warning to Showtime) |
Today, the vast majority of satellite backhaul feeds apply what's known as BISS encryption. Is cracking this encryption possible? Well, I won't ever endorse doing this, because de-scrambling satellite signals is illegal in the US (and elsewhere), but, if each key is 16 digit hex, and you're using a CUDA-accelerated GPU, well... I'll let you do the math. But aside from the legal concerns, finding and installing a C-Band dish is not an easy feat. These dishes usually range from 6 to 12 feet in diameter and require precise positioning to get a reliable signal, to say nothing of the issue of 5G interference. There's also the trouble of finding/purchasing one. In the US, few, if any of these dishes are available for purchase and your best bet would be third party marketplaces like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace (lots of people just want to get rid of them).
If committing felonies isn't your thing, there is still a non-insignificant amount of content that is free-to-air over both C and Ku-band. Rick Caylor's Satellite Wildfeed and Backhaul Forum is still used today by satellite enthusiasts who scour the North American satellites for television signals and share them for all, welcoming newcomers to this fun and engaging hobby.
