Halloween show debut was cool!

The Treehouse of Horror XIII was uplinked on Saturday morning, as anyone with a big dish (the "old fashioned" "worthless" obsolete C-band dishes, that is) could tell you.

In glorious vivid color (unmarred by compression or additional generations of distribution), the show was transmitted in 22 minutes so big dish owners needed not wait between segments: the breaks were just 15 seconds of black screens. OK, enough.

Three segments. First was Homer getting cursed by a fortune teller. He decided only a leprauchan could un-spell him. The Irish & Gypsy passion was hot.

Pierce Brosnan's voice as a robotic home automation was very 2001 reminiscent.

Finally, my biggest laugh was Bart's misfired attempt to create a magic prince. Smithers shows serpentine affection for the deceased Mr Burns. Don't watch that third segment with a full stomach. A dandy belated Boo!

Pham

wrote in message news:[email]...

I don't get it. How did you get to see it on Saturday? I've heard of the "satellite link" thing but I don't really understand it.

"Gabagimpy" wrote in message news:iZ5F7.36243$[email]...

Um, not that I doubt your honesty... but THOH XIII won't air until sometime in late 2002 right before Season 14.

"The Rack" wrote in message news:5DeF7.14759$[email]...

anyone

could

Of course, I was responding to the original poster... not Gabagimby.

well! i guess everything is wrapped up in a neat little package!!

ash-

No, really. He meant that. Sorry if it sounded sarcastic.

/ Kristian

+-------------------------------------------------------+
|Kristian Ronge                                         |
|[email]    [email]             |
|(civil)                (skola)                         |

|d99, datateknik, KTH (Kungliga Tekniska H�gskolan)     |
|d99, Computer Science, Royal Institute of Technology   |
+-------------------------------------------------------+

Neither do I, but I'll tell you what I know...

With the big 8-foot satellite dishes that are pretty rare nowadays, people can recieve raw feeds directly from the networks, usually without commercials. I thought most of them were scrambled, though...

No they aren't usually, they are just on obscure satellites that have nothing much on them. You have to have a good program guide that lists the feeds or some other source to find out. We use to have a big dish and late at night if there was nothing else on I would troll around and try to find some early morning feed. You can get all kinds of syndication feeds late at night.

Oh and sometimes you can find a transponder that one of the major networks uses to uplink live reports for local stations. Those things are live even if they aren't on air and you can sit there and watch the reporters practice and chit chat and fix their hair and generally look really stupid because they don't think anybody but the engineering guys are looking at the feeds.

Kevin

Well, the obscurity isn't all that profound! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find when and where the unscrambled transmissions are: just a subscription to a magazine like Satellite Orbit. There are other magazines too. A few even post these "secrets" on the Web:

http://www.orbitmagazine.com/wfeedsac.htm http://www.nmia.com/~roberts/wildfeed http://skybird.org/fnl/fnl/Birdfeed.txt

Of course, for the *real* techno weenies, the eggheads who have computers and actually are able to read and post on NewsGroups, the newest "wild feed" information is posted biweekly on rec.video.satellite.tvro ... both alphabetically and also by the time and day of week one might decide to grab a favorite show with no commercials, a few days prior to broadcast, (and in pristine condition: after all, these are the transmissions which are recorded by both your local TV channels, cable operators *and* by the small dish industry which they can then retransmit at their convenience.)

If you intrepid technical types decide to look in on rec.video.satellite.tvro to see all the shows listed for big dish owners, you'll recognize the posts as they are by Jorabi and last I see was 10/23 but another update is now due.

Sorry if I enumerated the Treehouse incorrectly. I purposely was coy in my descriptions as I did not want to be accused of "spoiling" anything. It'll be obvious to you after you've watched whether I've just teased you. Lucky Charms work better than Trix, though.

Pham

"With the big 8-foot satellite dishes that are pretty rare nowadays, people can recieve raw feeds directly from the networks, usually without commercials. I thought most of them were scrambled, though..."

There are about 1.2 million of us in the US at last count. Yes, that is a tiny number compared to cable and small dish subscribers. Turner TV sends me an offer *every month* to install a small dish with receiver etc for free. Free hardware, free installation, free premium subscriptions for 6 months. No obligation to subscribe beyond the first year. We all get these offers- intended to be "too good to refuse" and intended to undermine what remains of the big dish market.

Small wonder that not many BUD owners can bear to turn that down. Oddly, our subscriptions- which are completely a la carte: we don't get forced into packages of channels we don't want- continue to be a *lot* cheaper than any other source of similar. And the picture *is* better- even better than small dish digital (BUD has digital and true HDTV), *and* ... we realize we have become renegades. I like that, myself!

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