In 1945, Arthur C. Clarke, a British science fiction writer, envisioned a global communications system based on three satellites in earth orbit spaced equally apart. This was published in the Wireless World magazine in October 1945, and it earned him the Franklin Institute’s Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963.
On July 23, 1962, the Telstar satellite sent the first public satellite television broadcasts from Europe to North America across the Atlantic Ocean, almost two weeks after a test broadcast on July 11. Over 100 million people saw the signals, which were received and transmitted in North American and European countries. The Relay 1 satellite, launched in 1962, was the first to broadcast television signals from the United States to Japan. On July 26, 1963, Syncom 2, the first geosynchronous communication satellite, was launched.
On April 6, 1965, Intelsat I, often known as “Early Bird,” was launched into geosynchronous orbit as the world’s first commercial communications satellite. The Soviet Union launched Orbita, the first national network of television satellites, in October 1967, based on the premise of rebroadcasting and delivering television signals to ground downlink stations via the extremely elliptical Molniya satellite. Canada’s geostationary Anik 1, launched on November 9, 1972, was the first commercial North American satellite to carry television signals. On May 30, 1974, the world’s first experimental educational and direct broadcast satellite (DBS), ATS-6, was launched. It had two sound channels and transmitted at 860 MHz utilizing wideband FM modulation. The transmissions were aimed towards the Indian subcontinent, but experimenters in Western Europe were able to pick up the signal using home-built equipment based on existing UHF television design techniques.
On October 26, 1976, Ekran 1, the first in a series of Soviet geostationary satellites to provide direct-to-home television, was launched. It employed a downlink frequency of 714 MHz UHF so that the signals could be received using existing UHF television technology rather than microwave equipment.
Who was the first company to offer satellite television?
Various satellite services in the United States have came and gone or been combined over the last three decades to form the present primary services. In 1975, RCA launched Satcom 1, the first satellite designed specifically for the three main television networks at the time (CBS, NBC, and ABC). HBO leased a transponder on Satcom 1 later that year and began transmitting television shows to cable companies via satellite. Cable system owners paid $10,000 to construct 3-meter dishes to receive C band TV broadcasts. Taylor Howard created an amateur system for home satellite receiving in 1976, consisting of a repurposed military surplus radar dish and a satellite receiver conceived and built by Howard. Taylor’s technology could receive TV broadcasts from both American and Soviet communication satellites. Pat Robertson founded the CBN Cable Network, the first satellite-delivered basic cable service, in 1977. The Satellite Home Viewers Act of 1979 allowed US homeowners to own and operate their own home satellite system, which consisted of C-band equipment from a variety of manufacturers who were producing parts for systems like Taylor Howard’s, and it sparked a major debate over which channels could be received by whom.
In 1981, USSB launched a direct-to-home service. They collaborated with Hughes in the early 1990s and continued to operate until being purchased by DirecTV in 1998.
Primestar was the first DBS service in North America, debuting in 1991. In 1994, Hughes launched DirecTV, the first national high-powered upper Ku-band DBS system. The DirecTV system was chosen as USSB’s new delivery vehicle. Dish Network, owned by EchoStar, launched in the United States in 1996 and has enjoyed similar success as DirecTV. The AlphaStar service began in 1996 and ended in 1997 when it went bankrupt. Hughes purchased Primestar’s assets in 1999. Sky Angel, a Dominion Video Satellite Inc. service targeted at “faith and family,” debuted online in the United States in 1996 with its DBS service until it was sold to EchoStar Communications Corporation in 2008 and transitioned to an IPTV platform.
Cablevision’s Voom service launched online in 2004, catering to the growing market of HDTV owners and enthusiasts, however it was shut down in April 2005. The “exclusive high-definition channels” of the service were transferred to the Dish Network system. Commercial DBS services are the main rival to cable television, despite the fact that the two systems have quite 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).
Who was the first to invent the satellite dish?
H. Taylor Howard, a Stanford University professor and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientist, constructed the first personal satellite dish about the same period. The dish, which went into operation on September 14, 1976, was made of aluminum mesh and had a diameter of roughly 16 feet (5 meters). The satellite dish market exploded overnight, with roughly 5,000 household satellite systems selling for around $10,000 each.
When did satellite television first become available?
The first ever live television signal was broadcast over the Atlantic Ocean fifty years ago today, on July 12, 1962, ushering in a new era of communications that prepared the way for the globally connected society we live in today.
Will satellite television make it?
Satellite TV has fallen even more in recent years as cord-cutting has increased. For years, DirecTV and Dish Network, the two largest satellite carriers, have been progressively losing subscribers. In the first quarter of 2021, Dish Network lost another 230,000 pay-TV subscribers, with 8.69 million for Dish TV and 2.37 million for Sling TV. Even at the end of 2020, Dish hiked its prices.
What is India’s oldest satellite television channel?
Dr. Subhash Chandra, the founder of Zee Entertainment, established India’s first satellite television on October 2, 1992, which is now known around the world as Zee TV. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited was established on December 15, 1991, a few months before the launch of the channel.
Is it possible to receive free satellite television?
Free to Air satellite television channels are unencrypted and legally accessible to the general public. The consumer purchases and installs receiving equipment in order to watch a limitless number of channels from all over the world, covering a variety of genres.
What are the workings of TV satellites?
Satellite television is similar to broadcast television, except that instead of transferring signals from towers to antennas on your television, signals are sent through space via satellites. The signals come from the TV networks’ programmers, who send their feeds to DISH. DISH gathers all of these feeds at an uplink hub, where satellites on the ground broadcast a single stream of data at 270 Mbps to our space satellites.
When did satellite television first become available in the United Kingdom?
Sky, the UK’s first satellite TV service, starts with four free-to-air channels, including Sky News, Europe’s first 24-hour news station.
The 1940s and 1950s
In 1948, cable television began in Arkansas, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, almost simultaneously, to improve poor reception of over-the-air television signals in mountainous or geographically remote areas “To receive the broadcast signals, community antennas were erected on mountain tops or other high points, and homes were connected to the antenna towers.
Cable operators began to use their abilities to pick up broadcast signals from hundreds of miles away in the late 1950s. These are available to you “The focus of cable’s role began to shift from transmitting local broadcast signals to providing new programming options as distant signals became more prevalent.
The 1960s
By 1962, there were around 800 cable systems in operation, serving 850,000 users. Westinghouse, TelePrompTer, and Cox were among the first companies to invest in the company, supplementing the efforts of early entrepreneurs like Bill Daniels, Martin Malarkey, and Jack Kent Cooke.
Local television stations saw the growth of cable as a threat since it allowed them to import distant signals. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) increased its jurisdiction and set restrictions on cable providers’ capacity to import distant television broadcasts in response to broadcast sector concerns. As a result of these constraints, there was a “freeze effect” on cable system expansion in large areas that lasted into the early 1970s (see below).
The 1970s
The FCC continued its stringent tactics in the early 1970s, implementing regulations that limited cable providers’ ability to offer movies, sporting events, and syndicated programs.
The halt in cable expansion lasted until 1972, when a program of gradual cable deregulation resulted in new constraints on the importation of distant signals, among other things. The stifling of growth had negative financial consequences, particularly in terms of capital access. For several years, funding for cable development and growth was virtually non-existent.
Industry-led efforts at the federal, state, and local levels, on the other hand, have resulted in continuous reductions.
Throughout the decade, there have been a number of limits on cable. These innovations, combined with cable’s pioneering of satellite communications technology, resulted in a significant expansion in consumer services and cable customers.
Home Box Office, the nation’s first pay-TV network, was created in 1972 by Sterling Manhattan Cable’s Charles Dolan and Gerald Levin (HBO). This partnership resulted in the establishment of a nationwide satellite distribution system that utilized a newly approved domestic satellite transmission. Satellites revolutionized the industry, paving the stage for the rapid expansion of program networks.
The second service to make use of the satellite was a local Atlanta television station that largely broadcasted sports and old films. The station, owned by R.E. “Ted Turner, was delivered statewide via satellite to cable systems and was quickly dubbed “WTBS,” the first “superstation.”
By the end of the decade, growth had resumed, and cable had reached roughly 16 million households.
The 1980s
The 1984 Cable Act created a more favorable regulatory environment for the business, resulting in unprecedented investment in cable infrastructure and programming.
The 1984 Act’s deregulation had a significant positive impact on the rapid growth of cable services. The industry spent more than $15 billion on the wiring of America from 1984 to 1992, and billions more on software development. Since World War II, this was the largest private construction project.
The cable sector was able to become a major player in supplying high-quality video entertainment and information to consumers because to satellite distribution and the federal government’s relaxing of cable’s restrictive regulatory structure. Nearly 53 million households had cable by the end of the decade, and cable program networks had grown from 28 in 1980 to 79 in 1989. However, some of this expansion was accompanied by rising consumer costs, causing policymakers to become increasingly concerned.
The 1990s
In response to rising cable prices and other market factors, Congress passed legislation in 1992 that stifled cable growth once more and opened up previously “exclusive cable programming” to other competitive distribution technologies such as “wireless cable” and the emerging direct satellite broadcast (DBS) business.
Despite the 92 Act’s impact, the number of satellite networks continued to explode, owing partly to the alternative concept of targeting programs to a specified audience “a specific target market There were 139 cable programming services operating nationwide by the end of 1995, in addition to numerous regional programming networks. The number of national cable TV networks had increased to 171 by the spring of 1998.
More than 57 percent of all customers received at least 54 channels by that time, up from 47 in 1996. By the end of the decade, about 7 out of 10 television households, or more than 65 million people, had chosen cable.
Cable operators began a massive upgrade of their distribution networks in the later half of the decade, investing $65 billion between 1996 and 2002 to develop greater capacity hybrid fiber optic and coaxial cable networks. These include “On a single line into the home, broadband networks can provide multichannel video, two-way voice, high-speed Internet access, and high definition and advanced digital video services.
Cable providers were able to offer clients high-speed Internet access in the mid-1990s, as well as competitive local telephone and digital cable services later in the decade, thanks to the upgrade to broadband networks.
With the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the regulatory and public policy landscape for telecommunications services was once again radically altered, resulting in new competition and greater customer choice. It also prompted significant new investment, with AT&T, America’s then-largest telecommunications behemoth, entering the market in 1998 and quitting four years later (see below). Paul Allen, a Microsoft co-founder, began collecting his own stable of cable properties almost around the same time. And America On-Line merged with Time Warner and its cable businesses to form AOL Time Warner, a historic merger.
The cable sector was able to speed the rollout of broadband services thanks to a generally deregulated environment for cable operating and programming firms, giving consumers in urban, suburban, and rural areas additional choices in information, communications, and entertainment services.
and Beyond
With the arrival of the new millennium came fresh hopes and plans for the advancement of advanced services across cable’s broadband networks.
Cable providers began pilot testing video services that could transform the way people watch television as the new millennium began. Video on demand, subscription video on demand, and interactive TV are just a few examples. The industry was treading carefully in these areas since the expense of upgrading customer-premise equipment to make it compatible with these services was enormous, and it necessitated new, vast, and costly business models.
In 2001, partly in reaction to these pressures, AT&T decided to merge its cable systems with those of Comcast Corp., resulting in the creation of the world’s largest cable operator, with more than 22 million subscribers.
Lower-cost digital set-top boxes, which became commonplace in customer homes in the mid-1990s, were successful in facilitating the launch of many new video services. However, more expensive technology would be required for cable to begin delivering innovations such as high definition television services, which are being gradually supplied by off-air broadcast stations as well as cable networks like HBO, Showtime, Discovery, and ESPN.
The findings of a research funded by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing in 2002 were mainly reflected in the cable landscape by 2002. (CTAM). According to the survey, almost two out of every three households in the United States had access to three cutting-edge communication tools: cable television, cell phones, and personal computers. Digital cable was identified in 18 percent of U.S. television homes, implying a 27 percent overall digital cable penetration among cable users. In terms of data services, the study found that 20% of cable customers with PCs now use high-speed modems.
Cable operators with updated two-way plant have seen a significant increase in revenue “Broadband information. Cable has quickly surpassed other technologies, such as phone companies’ digital subscriber line (DSL) service, as the technology of choice for such services, outperforming them by a factor of two. By the end of the third quarter of 2002, more than 10 million people had signed up for high-speed Internet access via cable modems.
In all of the restricted market locations where cable-based telephone service was available, there was noticeable growth. By the middle of 2002, more than 2 million subscribers had switched to cable for their phone service.
Cable companies are aggressively increasing their digital cable offerings in order to meet rising demand. Around 280 nationally-delivered cable networks were available in 2002, with the number rapidly increasing.
The consumer electronics and cable sectors came to an agreement at the end of 2002 that allowed “one-way digital television sets to be connected directly to cable systems without the requirement for a set-top box.” Digital Cable Ready television sets are the brand name for these new TVs (DCRs). Cable operators supply cable customers with a security device known as a CableCARD that allows them to access encrypted digital programming after the cable operator has given them permission to do so. Discussions to overcome difficulties relating to “Two-way digital television sets were first introduced in 2003 and are still in use today.
In 2003, significant progress was achieved in the implementation of High-Definition Television (HDTV), Video-on-Demand (VOD), digital cable, and other sophisticated services, propelling the digital TV transition forward. With the introduction of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services by cable, competitive digital phone service gained traction. At the beginning of 2006, cable providers had a total of around 5 million telephone users, which included both VoIP and classic circuit switched telephone consumers.
According to an NCTA assessment of the top ten MSOs, 700 CableCARDs had been installed by September 1, 2004. By mid-November, the total number of CableCARDs had risen to over 5,000. NCTA predicted that number had risen to 100,000 a year later, at the end of 2005.
The results at the conclusion of the third quarter of 2005 show that cable’s new role as a broadband provider has a lot of room for expansion. Cable has spent more than $100 billion on capital projects. Cable’s high-speed Internet service had 24.3 million users at the end of the quarter, while the number of digital cable consumers had increased to 27.6 million.
Cable now serves millions of people with visual entertainment, Internet access, and digital phone service. What started with a few visionary pioneers over half a century ago has resulted in the creation of over 800 programming networks that are watched by over 93 percent of Americans. They also offer fantastic Internet speeds of up to 2 GBPS, with those speeds steadily increasing.
Cable operators have reimagined television, creating programming that follows our customers wherever they go.
It doesn’t matter where you are or what gadget you’re using.
In the previous 20 years, cable operators have invested over $275 billion in infrastructure and supported over 2.9 million employment.