I have been looking at getting a Free To Air satellite system and wanted to figure out what I needed and what would it cost. I am talking about the cheapest you can go and there maybe many reasons you would want better equipment. However, if you wanted to spend money you would be getting one of the dish companies to do it all for you!
Here is a list of the basic parts I think you would need and what they cost on Amazon. This originally was designed to be a mobile setup I could take with me in an RV.
33.00 Tripod Stand
22.45 Satellite Receiver
10.99 Coax Cable
52.89 Dish and LNB
7.51 Satellite Finder
126.84
Basically, you put the Dish on the tripod, run the Coax from the LNB on the dish to the satellite receiver then hook you TV to the receiver. The setup of the dish is helped by having a satellite finder which is basically just a signal strength meter.
I left off a magnetic compass for getting orientation as many people have these. In addition you would need a compass to set the up and down degrees and a level to make it all straight up and down. These parts might be more if you don't already own them. Also, there might be a cable or two for hooking to your TV. The LNB that comes with this dish might not be all that wonderful and you might want one with a low signal noise as an upgrade.
There are a number of folks and websites that talk about which satellites to point at and where they are and I guess that would be the next step.
So for you accountants, you can figure how long you would need to pay for basic cable or Dish before you could have had a FTA system and be done paying.
Yah Bless