October 30th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK
There are free music TV channels on ‘Sky’ I know.
In fact, they’re not actually ‘on Sky’ at all. They’re FTA (Free To Air) which means they’re free to be received by anyone with a suitable satellite receiver - including the Sky digibox.
That means that they are also available on a Freesat box. They might not all be on either the Sky or Freesat EPG’s, but you can tune them manually regardless.
Bit boring though isn’t it?
Same old, same old.
Why not try for something a bit different?
Get yourself a motorised dish and you can sample the delights of many free music television channels, and also a mind-numbing number of free radio stations over satellite.
I’m going to try and give you a quick sample of the kind of things that can be picked up completely free, totally legally and very easily. Put simply, there is way more legit stuff out there than you can ever watch.
Let’s start off at the satellites located at 1° West. Swing your dish over there for 1 Music Channel. A good mix of modern popular music. Most flavours of UK and US stuff with a Romanian twist.
Get all the info and program listings etc. at their website at www.1music.ro. It’s a good looking website and it’s fairly easy to navigate the Romanian menus with a little imagination.
Next stop is Novy Channel on Sirius 4 at 5° East. A Ukrainian channel with more live music as opposed to just endless videos, and a lot more native content than many other networks which just pump out English-language music.
Novy Channel is definitely worth a look if you want to see something you wouldn’t normally come across, and is definitely worth checking out. OK, so some of it is crap, but we’re on a journey here.
Some interesting supporting footage and documentary-style filming from Ukraine gives you a very good feel of the country and its musical culture. It can be found by scanning transponder 11766 Horizontal with an SR of 27500 and a FEC of 3/4.
The web address should you want to have a look is www.novy.tv.
There’s a great Cuban channel on Hispasat 30° West - CubaVision. Whilst not strictly a full time music channel, many times when I’ve flipped over to have a watch of this one they have been showing either live music or something else to cause me to hover over the channel change button. Some great music on here. A lot of interesting South American content as you would expect, but the quality of the pictures can be pretty dire!
If you want to visit the website, then you can find it here: www.cubavision.cubaweb.cu
I sometimes have this on in the background when at the computer and it’s well worth having a look at.
Cubavisión International has its headquarters in Havana, and transmits daily to ‘the outside’ (that’s what it says on the website!) 24 hours a day and FTA. As well as music, it also covers the genres of “culture, sports, tradition, science and technical, tourism and geography, among others.”
Find it on 12092 Vertical at 30° West. Also to be found on ASTRA, INTELSAT and ASIASAT birds.
Moving on to 7° East and Eutelsat W3A there is Africable - again, not strictly a ‘music channel’, but has a high percentage of music-related content. Lots of recycled stuff from way back when, plus the latest promotional material of course. It also carries quite a bit of minor-league stuff which I really enjoy.
Maybe you need to pick your viewing times, but I often catch something of note here. I haven’t really worked out the program schedule yet. The website at www.africable.net has been down whenever I’ve tried it, so no help there.
Remember to have a look in on this one to enjoy the unusual mix of Senegalese-produced music.
Time for a brand new one. Can’t tell you much about this, as it only launched today! So get off your butt, and tune your tuning whatsit into 11804 Vertical on Turksat at 42° East. It looks OK to me, but time will tell if it’s any good. It’s called ‘Plus Muzik‘ and I’m going to hazard a wild guess that they’ll carry a fair bit of Turkish music.
Can’t even find a website for it yet it’s that new!
Next stop on the free music tour is MTV Arabia located at BADR4 - 26° East that is - 12169 Vertical 27500 3/4.
MTV Arabia is ‘a revolution in Music Television’. What it actually is, is the same thing as all the other MTV stations but with a new logo and the suffix ‘Arabia’.
It’s free though, so it’s in. Not that much Free to Air MTV around the satellite arc, so fill yer’ boots.
It’s exactly what you’d expect to be honest. Here’s a wonderful picture of the homies biggin’ up Margate in February.
MTV Arabia is in fact a joint venture between MTV Networks International and Arabian Television Network, and launched in November 2007. It does include some specialist content, with shows called HipHopna, Introducing, Baqabeeq, Banat, Rewes, Waslity, Amour, Cimena, MTV Weyakom and Na3na3.
That’ll do for now. Maybe I’ll do a few more another time, but it shouldn’t stop you getting a head start!
