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C-band, Full View, Big Dish, whatever you want to call them, c band systems are the original home satellite TV systems and have been around since the early 1980s.

For the first six to eight years these systems were rather large and bulky. Most cband satellite antennas were from 10 to 12 feet in diameter. The size of the dish began shrinking around 1989 to as little as 6 feet. This was due to new, higher power satellites placed in orbit and partly to advances in the electronic components related to the reception of these signals. The average dish for cband reception is now 7.5'. While this is quite a bit larger than the new DSS and other mini-dish systems, there are a few distinct advantages to the larger cband systems.

Of these, perhaps the biggest advantage is free channels. While DSS and other mini-dish systems have no free channels, there are between 100 to 200 free channels available at any given time on a cband system. Granted, these free channels are not premium channels like HBO or Showtime, but there are many worth watching.

The second advantage of owning the larger cband system is what are called "wild feeds and news feeds". Wild feeds are typically syndicated television shows that can be viewed in advance of their air date and time. News feeds are raw news footage intended for reception by a local station or network which may be in any city or town in the US, sometimes even the world. Most anytime there is a big news story you can see live, unedited coverage of the event.

While these two advantages may sound appealing, keep in mind however, the larger cband systems are more difficult to install (not recommended for the "do it yourselfer") and have moveable parts are other components that at some point will fail and have to be replaced. The smaller DSS systems are easy to install and have no moving parts to wear out.

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