Well, FTA means Free to Air and a FTA receiver is a satellite receiver which is equipped to receive unencrypted FTA satellite transmissions. An FTA satellite receiver is able to decode the MPEG-2 data compression protocol used in most Free to Air satellite transmissions. Any DirecTV or Dish Network programming would not be un-encrypted by the FTA receiver. Most of the FTA receivers found are stand-alone hardware boxes which look similar to a Dish Antenna. Also, there are few PC based FTA receivers which allow you to watch FTA satellite on your PC.

There are some specific things which is needed to be looked before buying it. Make sure that the features like OSD, PIP, EPG, Power Scan, Dolby SPDIF, etc are present in it. Along with it you need some additional things like A satellite dish, an LNB and an Antenna motor.