The big ass ones that went on the ground? Why havn’t the satelite TV companies upgraded them to a newer smaller one that goes on their roof?
I think the question to ask is, “Why don’t the satellite TV companies remove the antennas no longer being used?”
It is my understanding that many (all?) of those antennas are obsolete, and so are the companies that placed them there, i.e. there was never a plan in place to remove old technology, especially if your satellite TV provider went into bankruptcy.
If you’re a homeowner without a lot of disposable income, you probably don’t want to pay to have the big dish removed. You just get a new dish and put it up, or cable eventually made its way out to your neighborhood and rendered the dish debate moot.
Don’t worry, that dish’ll rust away in a few generations 
I knew a few people that had those dishes and none of them were supplied by any satellite company.
Each mega-dish was owned by the homeowner. One guy had no contracts with any provider and watched mostly the unscrambled feeds that some sat/network/cable sources were using for their regional down links.
One other guy had a descrambler box that he paid for to view sports and porno.
I imagine now that the home-owners are still able to get some content or they are too lazy to tear down the dish.
There is still lots of programming that can be received on those big dishes, affectionately called Big Ugly Dishes or BUDs.
Just as some people make a habit of watching trains go by (eg: trainspotting) there are people that think it great fun to twirl the dial, so to speak, and watch “wild” feeds from newscrews in the field, and similar oddball stuff. I don’t know if it’s still possible, but it at least used to be possible to catch daily late-night programming like The Late Show with David Letterman in the afternoon as it was being sent out to the nationwide affiliates for them to record and run later that day.
More practically, it is still possible to subscribe to programming a la carte on a BUD and get only the programming you want - great if you want only Showtime and the Weather Channel, and don’t want to pay for 120 other “bundled” channels.
As **BubbaDog **said, most BUDs and receivers were bought by and are owned by individuals, as opposed to the small dishes and receivers being provided by Dish Network or DirecTV on a lease arrangement.
I don’t think you can do that now that the content is all digital. I used to have a few friends with various satellite/cable descramblers (or “signal testers” :dubious:) and they all had to chuck them in when the local cable/satellite providers went digital.
I bought my house from a guy who was the former sports editor of the local news paper. He bought a big ugly dish before cable was in the area so he could watch any sporting event that he wanted to see. By the time I bought the house everything was scrambled and it was just an eye sore.
I had a hell of a time getting rid of the thing but finally found someone who was willing to take it off of my hands for free. He owned a farm way out in the boonies and was going to use it to pipe Mexican content into the dorms where the farm workers were housed.
To answer the GQ, people still have them because it’s potentially expensive and certainly a pain in the ass to get rid of them.
Myself, I’d line it with foil and make it into a solar cooker. There’s plenty of use for a large parabolic dish.
How else are you supposed to get good reception from the ass satellite?
Could they be turned into radio telescopes?
Your mama is so fat that her… oh, never mind.
It’s been done, but should really be done a lot more.
A long time ago, I drove by ESPN in Bristol, CT and was struck by the array of dishes they had.
Don’t know how old the photo in the link is but look at them there thibngs!
Anecdote: When I had my DirecTV installed the guy that did it was a real trip. He could have been from central casting. He obviously had spent too much time alone in his van. Anyway, he told me that he’s done installations for people with those dishes. He would than ask them if they wanted him to remove the BUD. Of course, they were more than happy to have him do it. Then he would take the scrap to the recycler and pocket about $200. Of course he was independent and would make the long, rural runs that most installers wouldn’t do. I admire his initiative.
Yes!
I remember reading somewhere about folks setting up multiple antennas to create their very own “VSVLAs”.
CMC +fnord!
I think they could be quite useful as solar concentrators, as mentioned upthread. Cover them with tinfoil, stick a diverging lens just in front of the focal point to parallelize the rays, mount a gimbaled mirror at the focal point to direct the beam to your other equipment, and you have a [del]1980’s-style solar-powered “Death Ray”[/del] source of hot bright light for all sorts of uses.
When I moved into my house 15 years ago, there was a BUD in the backyard. I thought it was great, because the previous homeowner even left the controller (converter box?), and I’d heard it was possible to get raw feeds of sporting events, and I wanted to watch auto racing even when the regular station went to commercial.
Then I tried to take the box to a satellite store to see if I could still use it, becasuse the previous guy had disconnected it, and had cable installed, and I was told the whole setup was obsolete.
A few years later I cut down the whole dish with a reciprocating saw, disassembled it, and sold it for scrap. (I’d thought about the solar oven bit, but then thought, “Why use a 12-foot oven to cook a couple of lousy potatoes?” So that went by the wayside.)
I was thinking “great auk birdbath”, myself.
A related question:
What’s with those small to mid size satellite dishes on top of gas stations?
They aren’t Dish Network or Direct TV units and I doubt they’d set it up just so the guy behind the counter could watch TV all day.
I thought maybe it was to receive info on current pricing but wouldn’t just be easier with a basic internet connection?
Depending on where you see them, it may be a part of their security system.
Some of the larger convenience store chains, like Allsups and 7-11, no longer have the little VCR in back whirring away, recording images from the security cameras. Instead, the data from the cameras is actually sent up to a satellite, where it is downloaded and stored at a central location. No more “stealing the tape” by a robber to conceal his identity.
Aha. Makes sense, thanks.