Direct Broadcast Satellite

– Dbs Essay, Research Paper

Remember when Cable TV came into the picture and began bullying around the network stations for all their lunch money. Well watch out Cable because you might get a little taste of your own Medicine from a powerful extra terrestrial,… satellite that is. A multi-channel alternative to cable television known as Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) is now available in theUnited States of America and boy is it ready to rock. DBS provides picture perfect cable-like television programming directly from satellite dishes approximately 18 inches in diameter. Millions of households now subscribe to DBS services resulting in what appears to have the cable industry wondering what.s going to happen.

Cable was introduced in the late 1940.s in the .boone docks. of Pennsylvania when it.s original name was known as CATV, or Comunity Antenna TV. During this time there were only a few stations and in order to even recieve any picture, a TV set had to be in the vacintaty of antenna where a signal could be recieved. Anyone with a TV who lived to far from the antenna would be crap out of luck. Finally an appliance store owner named John Walson hooked up an antenna to a nearby mountain where he recieved a signal from the cities transitter and wired it down to his store for a good picture. When his clients witnessed that good picture could be brought to their area, John Walson.s TV sales went up drastically. From then on cable started multiplying like horny .GREMLINS. and .GOONIES..

In the past cable.s main purpose was to bring network stations to the rural areas. Today cable is capable of carrying hundreds of channels and is the leading source in TV programming with over 60 million subscribers and tons of diverse programming. Before it was all networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX that could be seen on TV. They led the way for a while until cable came along. Today with help from satellites, 24 hour sports(ESPN) and movie(HBO) programming is availible in most cable packages and that was the main reason why cable became so popular. It.s been over 50 years of success for cable, but with the turn of the century coming, what kind of future does cable have with these new media technologies on the rise.

Now in the year 1999, the civilized people of this wireless world will experience the power of DBS. If trends begin as they ussually do, DBS will take over the TV screens while cable and network stations stcatch their heads and wonder what the hell just happened. Their best bet would be to follow that famous saying, . If you can.t beat them, join them.. And so they kind of have since digital cable can be produced through the fiber optic cables. In short, these two mediums will be battling head to head until they prove who.s more dominant to the consumer. Or will the theory of convergeance combine all mediums so that thier will be less competition. Who knows, only time will tell.

As far as DBS is concerned, its appeal to the consumer is primarily its channel capacity. The viewer would have the opportunity to watch proggramming in all regions which is especially pleasant for the sports fan. For example, a Raiders fan who had the DBS system could watch his Raiders play, even though their locked out of the Bay Area programming, because he could watch it from the opponents region. With DBS installed it would be hard not find something to watch. Besides the amount of diverse proggramming availible world wide, DBS will distribute a magical picture that needs to be at least seen once by every human. From then on, leave it up to the consumer to decide.

The DBS industry is dominated by DIRECTV and Echostar with their services called DIRECTV and DISH Network. These two services are very simular in their price, the way they practice, and work as a business. Although they still have far fewer subscribers than the Cable TV industry at the moment, DBS services are rapidly adding subscribers and the industry is showing some very strong growth.

The first U.S. high-powered DBS satellite was made by Hughes Aircraft Co. and owned by Hughes Electronic Corp.’s DirecTV and Hubbard Broadcasting’s United States Satellite Broadcasting (USSB). Providing 150 television channels, it was launched in 1993, from Kourou, French Guiana. The power of DBS permits receivers to use an antenna that is only 46 cm (18 in) in diameter. Such an antenna can be clamped to a windowsill or mounted on the roof or on a pedestal outside the house. A June 1996 promotional campaign by one company offered antennas for $199. By 1996, according to the National Cable Television Association, DBS subscribership was doubling each year. Satellites continue to be launched, and improvements in technology allow increasingly larger numbers of TV channels to be downlinked. The orbital slots available over the Equator are carefully controlled by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), however. The ITU requires each nation to coordinate its satellite slots with its neighbors. The last available slot for DBS satellites that could reach all of the U.S. was sold in January 1996 to MCI Communications Corp. for a whopping $682.5 million.

Besides DIRECTV and DISH Networks, there are currently a few other all-digital DBS services in the U.S. today called SkyAngel, and Unity Motion. Two other companies, Primestar and the United States Broadcasting Company are about to phase out their ser