'Free' satellite tv?

The last time I had a satellite dish was a few years ago before all the new mini-dishes arrived. At that time you could get quite a few different channels free simply by getting your dish pointing the right way - no cards or subscriptions. Most of the channels were foreign ones, predominantly German (e.g. ZDF, Sat1 etc.).

I have a satellite dish (mini-dish type) attached to my chimney as the previous owners left it there and there is a cable dangling in the corner of the lounge apparently ready to use.

Does anyone know what receiver box I could attach that's cheap and will receive any free channels out there - if indeed there are any any more! We have NTL which (fingers crossed) is fine at the moment so I'm not interested in signing up for Sky / Sky+ just yet, but wouldn't mind being able to get foreign free channels if that's possible.

 

See http://sam-radford.me.uk/ftv.htm for starters. Attach any digital satellite receiver to your dish LNB cable to see these UK programmes.

Obviously you can get free foreign programmes from other satellites by realigning the dish (preferably a larger dish) or by fitting more LNBs to a larger dish.