Satellite television broadcasting, ‘direct to home’, is called DTH or Direct T V. Initially the term DTH was meant to differentiate between the signals carried for direct transmission to homes from those that were carried for cable television. The term DBS (direct broadcast satellite) or as some refer to as ‘Satellite Direct TV’ now generally refers to a commercial service or free television channels transmitting from a particular position and exclusively for one country. DTH providers generally transmit over a larger range of frequencies (analogue as well as digital) allowing them to offer more features than DBS, which is exclusively digital and requires larger dishes than the former.
Direct TV or Satellite direct TV (DBS) was first commercially launched in 1989 in Britain, by what is now BSkyB, part of the News Corporation group. 1991 saw the launch of DTH services in the US, by PrimeStar, which was later taken over by DirecTV. DTH services are now available in a number of countries all over the world, including members of the European Union, Russia, China, India, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, South East Asian countries, etc. Its rapid spread highlights the obvious advantages these forms of transmissions have over the problems faced by terrestrial or cable providers. Besides they can offer a wide range of services other than simple television signals. Not that there are no drawbacks – atmospheric disturbances, link failures, weather patterns, etc. can completely or partially disrupt satellite directv.
All forms of satellite television have transmission signals delivered direct to receivers in the homes of subscribers by bouncing off communication satellites. There are 5 major components in a DBS or DTH satellite system. The scrambled signal originates at a terrestrial TV studio, from where it is sent to transmission towers or dishes that forward them to one or more overhead satellites. The signal is then transmitted either to another satellite (for covering a larger geographical mass) or back to earth. The signal is received by a small satellite dish placed in homes having a direct TV connection, from where it travels to a set top box, which unscrambles the signal and feeds it into a TV set for viewing. Scrambling of the signal is necessary to retain the exclusivity of the transmission and the subscriber.
Nowadays, in most countries and locations that have the service, the programs a subscriber of satellite direct TV gets to see are presented as a package by the DBS or DTH provider. There may be a base package containing a fixed number of specified channels to which the subscriber adds-on (at a cost) those channels or packages of channels which interest him or her. The broadcast is exclusively digital, allowing for excellent picture and sound quality which is generally much better than what a cable TV or a terrestrial TV signal based provider can ensure. In all these cases the provider (whether DTH or cable) only acts as a broker between the programming source (Star, HBO, Zee, ASPN, etc) and the viewer, by paying the former and collecting from the latter.
Any which way satellite direct TV has definitely made life more entertaining.