|
Satellite TV - The First Fifty Years
Satellite TV - The First Fifty Years
By Rachael Stillman and Gary Davis
Dish-Network-Satellite-TV.ws
Webmasters: You may reprint this article in its entirety,
providing you leave the Byline and About the Author sections
intact, including the links to Dish Network
Satellite TV. Satellite TV may seem quite new, but its
history actually spans over a fifty year period.
The original concept of satellite television is often attributed
to writer Arthur C. Clarke, who was the first to suggest a
worldwide satellite communications system. Funding for satellite
technology in the U.S. began in the 1950s, amidst the space
race, and the Russian launching of the satellite Sputnik in
1957.
The first communication satellite was developed by a group of
businesses and government entities in 1963. Syncom II orbited at
22,300 miles over the Atlantic; the first satellite
communication was on July 26, 1963, between a U.S. Navy ship in
Lagos, Nigeria and the U.S. Army naval station in Lakehurst, New
Jersey.
Overloaded land based distribution methods had the telephone
companies utilizing satellite communication way before the
television industry even came into the picture. In fact, it was
not until 1978 that satellite communication was officially used
by the television industry.
In 1975, RWT's co-founder and BBC transmitter engineer Stephen
Birkill built an experimental system for receiving Satellite
Instructional Television Experiment TV (SITE) transmissions,
beamed to Indian villages, from a NASA geostationary satellite.
Birkill extended his system, receiving TV pictures from
Intelsat, Raduga, Molniya and others. In 1978, Birkill met up
with Bob Cooper, a cable TV technical journalist and amateur
radio enthusiast in the U.S., who invited him to a cable TV
operators' conference and trade show, the CCOS-78. It was there
that Birkill met with other satellite TV enthusiasts, who were
interested, and ready to help develop, Birkills experiments.
Interest in Television Receive Only (TVRO) satellite technology
burst forward. The American TVRO boom caught the attention of
premium cable programmers, who began to realize the potential of
A Look Ahead To 2008 (Part I)Just as everyone has breathed a sigh of relief at the end of 2004 presidential campaign, I would like to take a quick look ..... satellite TV. Back in the mid-1970s, TV reception was the under
the control of international operators, Intelsat and
Intersputnik.
On March 1, 1978, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
introduced Public Television Satellite Service. Satellite
communication technology caught on, and was used as a
distribution method with the broadcasters from 1978 through
1984, with early signals broadcast from HBO, TBS, and CBN
(Christian Broadcasting Network, later The Family Channel). TVRO
system prices dropped, and the trade organization, Society for
Private Commercial Earth Stations (SPACE), and the first
dealerships were established.
Broadcasters realized that everyone had the potential to receive
satellite signals for free, and they were not happy. But the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was governed by its open
Attention Pastors Wives! A T T E N T I O N P A S T O R S W I V E S! "No More Bags" by Kathy Pedeaux Wouldn't you agree that life is too short to live with ..... skies' policy, believing that users had as much right to receive
satellite signals as broadcasters had the right to transmit
them.
In 1980, the FCC established the Direct Broadcast Satellite
(DBS), a new service that consisted of a broadcast satellite in
geostationary orbit, facilities for transmitting signals to the
satellite, and the equipment needed for people to access the
The Town Of ToursTours is a French town located within the area of Loire Valley, surrounded by the Cher River and the Loire River, at ..... signals. In turn, broadcasters developed methods of scrambling
their signals, forcing consumers to purchase a decoder, or a
direct to home (DTH) satellite receiver, from a satellite
program provider.
From 1981 to 1985, the big dish satellite market soared. Rural
areas gained the capacity to receive television programming that
was not capable of being received by standard methods.
The Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association of
America (SBCA) was founded in 1986 as a merger between SPACE and
the Direct Broadcast Satellite Association. But by this point,
American communication companies had soured on the prospect of
satellite TV. Broadcast cable was very successful at this time,
and the satellite industry received a lot of negative press
coverage. Fifty percent of all satellite retailers closed their
businesses.
Business eventually recovered, but the illegal theft of pay
television signals was still a problem. Ultimately, encryption
has proven to be the ultimate salvation of the satellite
industry as it has made the transition from a hardware to
software entertainment-driven business.
Early successful attempts to launch satellites for the mass
consumer market were led by Japan and Hong Kong in 1986 and
1990, respectively. In 1994, the first successful attempts in
America were led by a group of major cable companies, known
collectively as Primestar.
Later that year, Direct TV was established, and in 1996, the DISH
Network, a subsidiary of Echostar, also entered the
satellite TV industry. DISH Networks low prices forced
competing DBS providers to also lower their prices. And an
explosion in the popularity of digital satellite TV ensued.
About the author:
About the Authors: Gary Davis is owner
of Dish
Network Satellite TV and has written numerous articles on
the satellite television industry. Kate Ivy has written for a
variety of publications and websites and is the owner of Ivygirl Media &
Design.
|
