Satellite TV
When satellite television first hit the market in the early 1990s, home dishes were expensive metal units that took up a huge chunk of yard space. In these early years, only the most die-hard TV fans would go through all the hassle and expense of putting in their own dish. Satellite TV was a lot harder to get than broadcast and cable TV.
Today, you see compact satellite dishes perched on rooftops all over the United States. Drive through rural areas beyond the reach of the cable companies, and you’ll find dishes on just about every house. The major satellite TV companies are luring in more consumers every day with movies, sporting events and news from around the world and the promise of movie-quality picture and sound.
Satellite TV offers many solutions to broadcast and cable TV problems. Though satellite TV technology is still evolving, it has already become a popular choice for many TV viewers.
In this article, we’ll find out how satellite TV works, from TV station to TV set. We’ll also learn about the changing landscape of TV viewing and some basic differences that distinguish satellite TV from cable and over-the-air broadcast TV.
Problems with Broadcast TV
Conceptually, satellite TV is a lot like broadcast TV. It’s a wireless system for delivering television programming directly to a viewer’s house. Both broadcast television and satellite stations transmit programming via a radio signal.Broadcast stations use a powerful antenna to transmit radio waves to the surrounding area. Viewers can pick up the signal with a much smaller antenna. The main limitation of broadcast TV is range. The radio signals used to broadcast television shoot out from the broadcast antenna in a straight line. In order to receive these signals, you have to be in the direct line of sight of the antenna. Small obstacles like trees or small buildings aren’t a problem; but a big obstacle, such as the Earth, will reflect these radio waves.
If the Earth were perfectly flat, you could pick up broadcast TV thousands of miles from the source. But because the planet is curved, it eventually breaks the signal’s line of sight. The other problem with broadcast TV is that the signal is often distorted, even in the viewing area. To get a perfectly clear signal like you find on cable, you have to be pretty close to the broadcast antenna without too many obstacles in the way.
The Satellite TV Solution
Satellite TV solves the problems of range and distortion by transmitting broadcast signals from satellites orbiting the Earth. Since satellites are high in the sky, there are a lot more customers in the line of sight. Satellite TV systems transmit and receive radio signals using specialized antennas called satellite dishes.
Satellites are higher in the sky than TV antennas, so they have a much larger line of sight range.
|
The TV satellites are all in geosynchronous orbit, meaning that they stay in one place in the sky relative to the Earth. Each satellite is launched into space at about 7,000 mph (11,000 kph), reaching approximately 22,200 miles (35,700 km) above the Earth. At this speed and altitude, the satellite will revolve around the planet once every 24 hours — the same period of time it takes the Earth to make one full rotation. In other words, the satellite keeps pace with our moving planet exactly. This way, you only have to direct the dish at the satellite once, and from then on it picks up the signal without adjustment, at least when everything works right.
At the core, this is all there is to satellite TV. But as we’ll see in the next section, there are several important steps between the original programming source and your TV set.
Satellite TV System
Early satellite TV viewers were explorers of sorts. They used their expensive dishes to discover unique programming that wasn’t necessarily intended for mass audiences. The dish and receiving equipment gave viewers the tools to pick up foreign stations, live feeds between different broadcast stations, NASA activities and a lot of other stuff transmitted using satellites.
|
The Wild Side
Early satellite TV viewers who used C-band radio for their broadcasts were able to catch wild feeds of syndicated programs, sporting events and news. These broadcasts were free, but viewers had to hunt them down — they didn’t get previewed or listed like regular broadcast programming. These signals still exist, and Satellite Orbit magazine publishes a list of today’s wild feeds. |
Some satellite owners still seek out this sort of programming on their own, but today, most satellite TV customers get their programming through a direct broadcast satellite (DBS) provider, such as DirecTV or DISH Network. The provider selects programs and broadcasts them to subscribers as a set package. Basically, the provider’s goal is to bring dozens or even hundreds of channels to your TV in a form that approximates the competition, cable TV.Unlike earlier programming, the provider’s broadcast is completely digital, which means it has much better picture and sound quality. Early satellite television was broadcast in C-band radio — radio in the 3.7-gigahertz (GHz) to 6.4-GHz frequency range. Digital broadcast satellite transmits programming in the Ku frequency range (11.7 GHz to 14.5 GHz ).
 |
The Components
There are five major components involved in a direct to home (DTH) or direct broadcasting (DBS) satellite system: the programming source, the broadcast center, the satellite, the satellite dish and the receiver.
- Programming sources are simply the channels that provide programming for broadcast. The provider doesn’t create original programming itself; it pays other companies (HBO, for example, or ESPN) for the right to broadcast their content via satellite. In this way, the provider is kind of like a broker between you and the actual programming sources. (Cable TV companies work on the same principle.)
- The broadcast center is the central hub of the system. At the broadcast center, the TV provider receives signals from various programming sources and beams a broadcast signal to satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
- The satellites receive the signals from the broadcast station and rebroadcast them to Earth.
- The viewer’s dish picks up the signal from the satellite (or multiple satellites in the same part of the sky) and passes it on to the receiver in the viewer’s house.
- The receiver processes the signal and passes it on to a standard TV.
Satellite TV Programming
Satellite TV providers get programming from two major sources: national turnaround channels (such as HBO, ESPN and CNN) and various local channels (the ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS affiliates in a particular area). Most of the turnaround channels also provide programming for cable TV, and the local channels typically broadcast their programming over the airwaves.
Turnaround channels usually have a distribution center that beams their programming to a geosynchronous satellite. The broadcast center uses large satellite dishes to pick up these analog and digital signals from several sources.
Most local stations don’t transmit their programming to satellites, so the provider has to get it another way. If the provider includes local programming in a particular area, it will have a small local facility consisting of a few racks of communications equipment. The equipment receives local signals directly from the broadcaster through fiber-optic cable or an antenna and then transmits them to the central broadcast center.
The broadcast center converts all of this programming into a high-quality, uncompressed digital stream. At this point, the stream contains a vast quantity of data — about 270 megabits per second (Mbps) for each channel. In order to transmit the signal from there, the broadcast center has to compress it. Otherwise, it would be too big for the satellite to handle. In the next section, we’ll find out how the signal is compressed.
|
Cable: Satellite’s Biggest Contender
With emerging technologies in each service, the hardest decision in TV viewing is no longer just what channel to watch — it’s what service to choose.
- Cable advantages: Advancements in digital cable provide improved audio and picture quality with additional channels at a lower cost than satellite. You can also access cable channels from multiple rooms in your house fairly easily.
- Cable disadvantages: Cable has limited access in rural areas, and you should prepare for increased service costs as your provider updates its equipment. Your service costs are also subject to local taxes.
- Satellite advantages: Satellite offers movie-quality audio and picture display with hundreds of channels. This service is readily available in rural and urban areas and provides access to more digital and high definition programming.
- Satellite disadvantages: It is expensive to purchase all the equipment at the outset (and you can’t typically rent it). If you want to access satellite TV in multiple rooms, be prepared for extra fees. Also, satellite TV is subject to weather-related malfunctions.
|
Satellite TV Signal
Satellite signals have a pretty long path to follow before they appear on your TV screen in the form of your favorite TV show. Because satellite signals contain such high-quality digital data, it would be impossible to transmit them without compression. Compression simply means that unnecessary or repetitive information is removed from the signal before it is transmitted. The signal is reconstructed after transmission.
Standards of Compression
Satellite TV uses a special type of video file compression standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). With MPEG compression, the provider is able to transmit significantly more channels. There are currently five of these MPEG standards, each serving a different purpose. DirecTV and DISH Network, the two major satellite TV providers in the United States, once used MPEG-2, which is still used to store movies on DVDs and for digital cable television (DTV). With MPEG-2, the TV provider can reduce the 270-Mbps stream to about 5 or 10 Mbps (depending on the type of programming).
Now, DirecTV and DISH Network use MPEG-4 compression. Because MPEG-4 was originally designed for streaming video in small-screen media like computers, it can encode more efficiently and provide a greater bandwidth than MPEG-2. MPEG-2 remains the official standard for digital TV compression, but it is better equipped to analyze static images, like those you see on a talk show or newscast, than moving, dynamic images. MPEG-4 can produce a better picture of dynamic images through use of spatial (space) and temporal (time) compression. This is why satellite TV using MPEG-4 compression provides high definition of quickly-moving objects that constantly change place and direction on the screen, like in a basketball game.
In the next section, we will see how satellite tv signals are encoded for transmission.
|
MPEG Standards
All MPEG standards exist to promote system interoperability among your computer, television and handheld video and audio devices. They are:
- MPEG-1: the original standard for encoding and decoding streaming video and audio files.
- MPEG-2: the standard for digital television, this compresses files for transmission of high-quality video.
- MPEG-4: the standard for compressing high-definition video into smaller-scale files that stream to computers, cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants).
- MPEG-21: also referred to as the Multimedia Framework. The standard that interprets what digital content to provide to which individual user so that media plays flawlessly under any language, machine or user conditions.
|
Satellite TV Encoding and Encryption
At the broadcast center, the high-quality digital stream of video goes through an MPEG encoder, which converts the programming to MPEG-4 video of the correct size and format for the satellite receiver in your house.
Encoding works in conjunction with compression to analyze each video frame and eliminate redundant or irrelevant data and extrapolate information from other frames. This process reduces the overall size of the file. Each frame can be encoded in one of three ways:
- As an intraframe, which contains the complete image data for that frame. This method provides the least compression.
- As a predicted frame, which contains just enough information to tell the satellite receiver how to display the frame based on the most recently displayed intraframe or predicted frame. A predicted frame contains only data that explains how the picture has changed from the previous frame.
- As a bidirectional frame, which displays information from the surrounding intraframe or predicted frames. Using data from the closest surrounding frames, the receiver interpolates the position and color of each pixel.
This process occasionally produces artifacts – glitches in the video image. One artifact is macroblocking, in which the fluid picture temporarily dissolves into blocks. Macroblocking is often mistakenly called pixilating, a technically incorrect term which has been accepted as slang for this annoying artifact. Graphic artists and video editors use “pixilating” more accurately to refer to the distortion of an image. There really are pixels on your TV screen, but they’re too small for your human eye to perceive them individually — they’re tiny squares of video data that make up the image you see. (For more information about pixels and perception, see How TV Works.)
|
Purposeful Pixilation
When is pixilation not just an adverse effect of decoding? When it’s employed as a means of censorship. Legislation passed in 2006 licenses the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to impose a $325,000 fine on TV stations that violate its standards of decency. In an effort to avoid fines, many TV stations now not only bleep out or muffle explicit language but also digitally manipulate or pixilate the speakers’ mouths to safeguard against the audience lip-reading the words. In The New York Times article “Soldiers’ Words May Test PBS Language Rules,” PBS considers how to protect itself from FCC fines while maintaining the authenticity of its documentary programming. |
The rate of compression depends on the nature of the programming. If the encoder is converting a newscast, it can use a lot more predicted frames because most of the scene stays the same from one frame to the next. In more fast-paced programming, things change very quickly from one frame to the next, so the encoder has to create more intraframes. As a result, a newscast generally compresses to a smaller size than something like a car race.
Encryption and Transmission
After the video is compressed, the provider encrypts it to keep people from accessing it for free. Encryption scrambles the digital data in such a way that it can only be decrypted (converted back into usable data) if the receiver has the correct decryption algorithm and security keys.
Once the signal is compressed and encrypted, the broadcast center beams it directly to one of its satellites. The satellite picks up the signal with an onboard dish, amplifies the signal and uses another dish to beam the signal back to Earth, where viewers can pick it up.
Satellite TV is different than cable TV. First of all you need a satellite dish in order to read a signal from a satellite in space. Your satellite dish connects directly to your satellite receiver which connects to your television. Satellite TV is great: the channels are endless and the freedom is also a plus. FTA FILES FORUM offers Free to Air Satellite Receivers and Support for FTA Satellite TV which is virtually ‘free satellite TV’.
Free Satellite TV? Yes, FTA Satellite TV is completely FREE. There is no monthly cost and it is extremely easy to find technical support online for your Free to Air Satellite Receiver. There are tons and tons of channels and satellites available for use with an FTA Receiver.
Buy your FTA Satellite Receiver from FTA FILES FORUM and you get FREE Lifetime Support for FTA Satellite TV. We will guide you through the entire setup process including dish pointing, receiver set up, and maintaining your Satellite TV with our premium support.
FTA FILES FORUM offers the best in Free to Air Satellite TV Service. We provide you with all the latest support required for your FTA Receiver to start watching FTA Satellite TV. We have all the latest Satellite FTA Files and Software to get your Pansat, Coolsat, Sonicview, Viewsat, Nfusion, Extremeview Magnum, Conaxsat, Digiwave, Pantec, and many other Free to Air Receivers setup for instant viewing.
Join now and start watching Free to Air Satellite TV with your Free to Air Satellite Receiver within 15 min. You get instant access to our private members area with all the software, keys, files, and 24 hour support to start watching satellite TV with your FTA Receiver.
URL.biz – Software
FTA Receivers are capable of reaching over 3500 different Satellite TV Channels. Your FTA Receiver is a very powerful unit and you should take full advantage of it by joining FTA today. We will get you watching free Satellite TV (FTA) within minutes. Join now or buy an FTA Receiver today and get a FREE Lifetime FTA Support Membership with http://www.ftaprofessionals.tv
