Scientific types may want to turn away. This is a very short, yet interesting, explanation of how does satellite TV work. Even though it has become very popular in the last few years, satellite TV has been around for a long time. The first satellite for TV was put into orbit in’62.
Back then people who wanted satellite for their televisions had to use a nine foot dish that they put in their back yards. They were really big, ugly, and gave an incredible variety of channels from other countries that made them totally worth the effort. Some people still have those dishes in their back yards. When somebody wants to get channels from a different country they call the neighbors to help them move the dish a tad. There were remotes included with the dishes but those were lost years ago.
At that time, and for several years after, no one who owned the dishes really knew which satellites were plugged into which countries. So, you would move the dish until you picked up a country that looked good and watch it for a few days or months until you moved the dish again. Sometimes you landed on your own country, most times you didn’t. But, it was fun and all countries have unique television programs that aren’t seen in other countries.
The popularity of satellite television started to explode when people became aware of the channels and capabilities of the satellite systems. That’s when the providers of satellite television got busy. They sent up a bunch of geostationary satellites that orbit at the same speed as earth. So, they don’t move, well they move but not really. Anyway, the ability to pick up channels got lots easier and the reception got way better. Very cool stuff for people who had become addicted to satellite early on.
Well, nine foot dishes just have never really caught on as a yard ornament in cities and they wanted satellite television also. So, satellite providers came up with little’” dishes that could be put just about anywhere on a house with a clear southern exposure and started beaming programs from all of the satellites to the dishes. No more calling the neighbors to move the dish, just a little dish stuck on the side of a building that was easy to move and 500 or so channels to choose from.
In cities however, obstruction was a problem and that is how “spot beams” were born. The satellites beam a signal to the spot beam, that beams a signal to the dish, that beams a signal to the receiver. This solved the problem of getting a signal just about anywhere in a metropolitan area easily.
Because the whole satellite system runs on radio signals, the satellite guys found that it saved a lot of space if they encoded the signals digitally and shot all the channels across the same bandwidth. They now have signals available in both standard and HDTV format going out twenty four hours a day.
So, for unscientific types that were wondering how does satellite TV work, there you have it. A really complex system that works really well.
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