About the minimum size dish usable for a very good C band location (no significant weather, neighbor's roof, trees, etc.) is about 7 feet. The normal size dish for C band was 10 feet and to guarantee reception with snow, heavy rain or dust you would need a 12 footer. The industry used to disparagingly refer to these dishes as BUDS (Big Ugly DisheS) and they were prohibited by most HOA's and expensive to buy and install. They also had to move from horizon to horizon to be able to receive the whole menu of satellite signals which meant the average Joe was not capable of the fine tuning needed from time to time. This is primarily why the "pizza pan" satellite dishes from DirecTV and DISH became so popular.
The other major drawback of C band (and Ku band if the dish was so equipped) was that you could watch only one channel (of 24 if C band or 36 if Ku band) at a time. That would not work for most multi person households.
I can't think of anything on commercial TV right now that would create a demand for the BUD once again unless and perhaps if you lived in the wild hinterlands and could not get programming any other way.
Back in the late 80's I paid about $1,400 for my dish and receiver. Assembled and installed it myself. On top of this cost you would have had to buy subscriptions to whatever programming you wanted. There were many more programmers doing business back then so the subs were not as expensive as today but eventually they became packaged so you could not pick and choose just the individual services you actually watched. As I remember my cost for programming back then was about $150/six months.
I finally dug up my BUD and sold the dish to a guy who wanted a sun cover for his garden. A sad ending for a marvelous technology.
