Satellite Dish TV

Get satellite dish TV and watch more channels for far less money.

What the heck IS satellite dish TV?  We hear people and companies talking about it all the time, but what is it, why is it, and where did it come
from? 

When satellite television first hit the market in the late 1980s, home dishes were expensive metal units that took up a huge chunk of your back yard.

In those early years, only the most die-hard TV fans would go through all the hassle and expense of putting in their own dish. Afterall, 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 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.

Conceptually, satellite dish 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.  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.

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.

The way it works is actually pretty simple.  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. 

The viewer's satellite 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 your house.  That's why you need to install the satellite dish on the roof of your house.