Satellite television

Satellite television is television delivered by way of communications satellites in geostationary orbit 37,000 km (22,300 miles) above the earth?s equator. The first satellite television signal was relayed from Europe to the Telstar satellite over North America in 1962. The first domestic North American satellite to carry television was Canada?s Anik 1, which was launched in 1973.

Satellite television by continent and country

United Kingdom

The first commercial DBS service, Sky Television, was launched in 1989 and served customers in the United Kingdom, providing 16 analogue TV channels. In the following year BSB was launched, broadcasting five channels in D2Mac format; the two services subsequently merged to form British Sky Broadcasting. In 1994 17% of the group was floated on London and U.S. stock exchanges, and Rupert Murdoch?s News Corporation owns a 35% stake.

Related Topics:
Sky Television - 1989 - United Kingdom - BSB - D2Mac - British Sky Broadcasting - 1994 - Stock exchange - Rupert Murdoch - News Corporation

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By 1999, following the launch of several more satellites (at 19.2°E by SES Astra, the number of channels had increased to around 60 and BSkyB launched the first subscription-based digital television platform in the UK, offering a range of 200 channels broadcast from the Astra satellites at 28.2°E under the brand name Sky Digital. BSkyB?s analogue service has now been discontinued, with all customers having been migrated to Sky Digital.

Related Topics:
SES Astra - Sky Digital

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United States

Consumer satellite television reception in the United States began in the early 1980s with the introduction of the first home satellite systems designed for receiving the same TVRO signals used for distribution to cable systems. Early setups were very expensive and large, with 12-foot (3.7 m) dishes common. Many were motorized, allowing for reception from multiple satellites, and therefore a greater selection of channels. Originally, all channels were available in the clear, including premium movie services, a major draw and source of growth for the then-burgeoning industry. In 1986, movie channel HBO encrypted their signal, setting a precedent for most other mainstream cable television services. This led to a major decline in the sales of satellite systems. By the early 1990s, the industry recovered as a result of Videocipher decoders being bundled with systems. TVRO systems reached their peak around 1995 before declining as a result of consumer adoption of higher-powered, "small-dish" systems such as DirecTV, Primestar, and the Dish Network. As of May 31, 2005, 215,076 big dishes were still subscribed to pay TV programming 1, as opposed to nearly three million at the peak in 1995, although more may be in use solely for free-to-air television reception.

Related Topics:
United States - HBO - Cable television - Videocipher - DirecTV - Primestar - Dish Network - May 31 - 2005 - Free-to-air

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Hughes?s DirecTV, the first high-powered DBS system, went online in 1994 and was the first North American DBS service; it is now owned by News Corporation. In 1996, EchoStar?s Dish Network went online in the United States and has gone on to similar success as DirecTV?s primary competitor. In 2004, Cablevision?s Voom service went online, specifically catering to the emerging market of HDTV owners and afficianados, but folded in April 2005, with the service?s ?exclusive? high-definition channels currently being migrated to the Dish Network system. Commercial DBS services are the primary competition to cable television service, although the two types of service have significantly different regulatory requirements (for example, cable television has public access requirements, and the two types of distribution have different regulations regarding carriage of local stations).

Related Topics:
Hughes - DirecTV - 1994 - North American - 1996 - EchoStar - Dish Network - United States - 2004 - Cablevision - Voom - HDTV - Cable television - Public access

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The majority of ethnic-language broadcasts to North America are carried on Ku band free-to-air; the largest concentration of ethnic programming is on Intelsat Americas 5 at 97° W. Globecast World TV offers a mix of free and pay-TV ethnic channels in the internationally-standard DVB-S format, as do others. Several U.S.-English language network affiliates (representing CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox, WB, i and UPN) are available as free-to-air broadcasts, as are the three U.S.-Spanish language networks (Univisión, Telefutura and Telemundo). The number of free-to-air specialty channels is otherwise rather limited. Specific FTA offerings tend to appear and disappear rather often and typically with little or no notice, although sites such as LyngSat do track the changing availability of both free and pay channels worldwide.

Related Topics:
Ethnic-language - K_u band - Free-to-air - Globecast - DVB - CBS - NBC - ABC - PBS - Fox - WB - I - UPN - Univisión - Telefutura - Telemundo

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Canada

In Canada, the two legal DBS services available are Bell Canada?s ExpressVu and StarChoice. The CRTC has refused to license American satellite services, but nonetheless hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Canadians access or have accessed American services ? usually these services have to be billed to an American address and are paid for in U.S. dollars. Whether such activity is grey market or black market is the source of often heated debate between those who would like greater choice and those who argue that the protection of Canadian firms and Canadian culture is more important.

Related Topics:
Canada - Bell Canada - ExpressVu - StarChoice - CRTC - U.S. dollars - Grey market - Black market - Culture

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Most recently as of 2004, an October 2004 ruling by judge Danièle Côté of Québec has determined the Canadian radiocommunication act to be in direct violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; the judgement gave the federal government a one-year deadline to remedy this breach of the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land.

Related Topics:
As of 2004 - October - 2004 - Québec - Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

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In addition, Canadian satellite providers continue to be plagued by the unquestionably black market devices which "pirate" or "steal" their signals as well as by a number of otherwise completely lawful devices which can be reprogrammed to receive pirate TV.

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One cable TV CEO (Karl Péladeau of Québecor, which owns Vidéotron) is on public record as demanding conditions be placed on the CRTC license issued to Bell ExpressVu, due to BEV?s reputation for vastly inferior security compared to its cable rivals and Shaw Cable?owned StarChoice.

Related Topics:
Cable TV - Québecor - Vidéotron - Bell ExpressVu - Shaw Cable - StarChoice

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Although there are no official statistics, the use of American satellite services in Canada appears to be declining as of 2004.

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Some would claim that this is probably due to a combination of increasingly aggressive police enforcement and an unfavourable exchange rate between the Canadian and U.S. currencies. As the U.S. dollar has been declining as of 2005 versus other international currencies, the decline in DirecTV viewership in Canada may well be related not to a cost difference as much as to the series of smart card swaps which have rendered the first three generations of DirecTV access cards (F, H and HU) all obsolete.

Related Topics:
Exchange rate - Canadian - As of 2005 - DirecTV

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Australia and New Zealand

Satellite television in Australia has proven to be a far more feasible option than cable television, due to the vast distances between population centres. The first service to come online in Australia was Galaxy Television, which was later taken over by Cable Television giant Foxtel, which now operates both cable and satellite services to all state capital cities and the Southwest. Its main metropolitan rival is Optus Television, while rural areas of the Eastern States are served by Austar. In neighbouring New Zealand, SKY Network Television now offers multichannel digital satellite TV, in addition to its terrestrial UHF service.

Related Topics:
Australia - Cable television - Galaxy Television - Foxtel - Optus Television - Austar - New Zealand - SKY Network Television - UHF

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Europe

In Europe, DBS satellite services are found mainly on the Hotbird (operated by Eutelsat) and Astra satellites, with Sky Italia, Canal Digitaal, Viasat, and UPC being the main providers in Italy, Western Europe, Scandinavia, and Central Europe. BSkyB (known as Sky Television) also serves Northern Europe and many channels can be received as far away as Cyprus.

Related Topics:
Hotbird - Eutelsat - Astra - Canal Digitaal - Viasat - UPC - Italy - Western Europe - Scandinavia - Central Europe - BSkyB - Northern Europe - Cyprus

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The overall market share of DBS satellite services in 2004 was 21.4% of all TV homes, however this highly varies from country to country. For example, in Germany, with many free-to-air TV-stations, DBS market share is almost 40%, and in Belgium and the Netherlands, it?s only about 7%, due to the widespread cable networks with exclusive content.

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Japan

The two satellite systems in use in Japan are B-SAT and JSAT; the BS digital service uses B-SAT, while SKY PerfecTV! uses JSAT.

Related Topics:
B-SAT - JSAT - BS digital - SKY PerfecTV!

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India

After more than a decade of debate and controversy, two networks were allowed to start Direct To Home (DTH) services in India, private broadcaster Zee Network and state owned broadcaster Doordarshan started Dish TV and DD Direct+ respectively.

Related Topics:
Zee Network - Doordarshan - Dish TV

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Due to several issues concerning competitors in the Cable TV space, Dish TV has not been able to garner the number of subscribers it had expected to win over from Cable TV because Zee Network?s competing broadcasters have refused to allow Dish TV to telecast their channels on the DTH platform. With legislation coming into place and the regulating authority TRAI working on the issue, this is expected to change soon.

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Dish TV uses the NSS 6 satellite for telecast.

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In 2005 Rupert Merdock owned STAR TV Network got into an alliance with one of the largest industrial houses(TATA) and has secured a license to launch their our DTH platform. Similarly Anil Ambani has shown interest in this business when one of his group companies Relience Energy also applied for a DTH license. The licensing terms and conditions can be had from http://www.mib.nic.in, the official website of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India

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Latin America

Latin America?s main satellite system is SKY Television, which has up to one million subscribers in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. In 2004, DirecTV Latin America was converted to SKY Latin America by News Corporation.

Related Topics:
SKY Television - Brazil - Colombia - Mexico - 2004 - DirecTV Latin America - SKY Latin America - News Corporation

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El Salvador

Cablevisa, Telefonica, Amnet, Comsat:

Related Topics:
Cablevisa - Telefonica - Amnet - Comsat

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In El Salvador the satellite can provide you the best television in Central America, because there are more channels available than in the rest of the countries. Some US channels are ABC, Satrz, ESPN, ESPN 2, MovieCity,HBO,TNT, Disney Channel,Sony, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Fox, E!, CNN, food TV, A&E, DW-TV, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Travel&Home, History Channel, Warner Channel, Fox Kids, Discovery Kids, National Geographic Channel, and many more. It also provides a lot of Latin channels, from Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and others. It also provides Salvadorean channels.

Related Topics:
ABC - Satrz - ESPN - ESPN 2 - MovieCity - HBO - TNT - Disney Channel - Sony - Cartoon Network - Fox - E! - CNN - A&E - DW-TV - Discovery Channel - Animal Planet - National Geographic Channel

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Some other satellites are: Dish and DirectTV

Related Topics:
Dish - DirectTV

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Africa

Multichoice is the satellite for both South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

Related Topics:
Multichoice - South Africa

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