Satellite television by region
Encyclopedia
Satellite television
varies in the different regions around the world.
n-based Multichoice
's DStv
is the main digital satellite television provider in sub-Saharan Africa, broadcasting principally in English
, but also in Portuguese
, German
and Afrikaans
. Multichoice
's DStv
reaches out to 5 million paid suscribers on 31 March 2011 (ref: Naspers' annual report - http://www.balancingact-africa.com/reports/broadcast/african-broadcast-an-0).
Canal Horizons, owned by France
's Canal+
and Vivendi, is the main provider in French-speaking
Africa
. Another entrant into the satellite television circuit in Africa is MyTv Africa, a subsidiary of Dubai based Strong Technologies.
The launch of Free2view has made satellite TV available to the masses in Africa. Free2view currently broadcasts MSNBC as its exclusive news channel and is about to roll out additional channels.
GTV (Gateway TV) - to differentiate from Ghana Television (GTV)-, a British-based company, became the next contender in sub-saharan Africa providing digital satellite television. But on January 30th. 2009, the Board of Directors of Gateway Broadcast Services (GBS) approved plans to liquidate the company which was later shut down. GBS was the operator behind GTV, a popular, if niche Direct to Home (DTH) satellite Pay-TV service present in 22 African markets. The collapse of GBS was sudden for its employees, its customers and those who have long believed that there is mass-market potential in African pay-TV.
Ref: http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/broadcast/issue-no47/top-story/death-of-a-dream-afr/bc
Star DTV, a chinese company which launched in 2009 has managed to reach about 800,000 households in Oct. 2011.
In 2010, ZAP
launched in Angola, providing digital satellite television mainly for Portuguese
speaking countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Satellite television has been far more successful in Africa than cable, primarily because the infrastructure for cable television does not exist and would be expensive to install since majority of Africans cannot afford paid cable television. Furthermore, maintaining a cable network is expensive due to the need to cover larger and more sparsely populated areas though there are some terrestrial pay-TV and MMDS services.
had held a monopoly over Nigeria
's Satellite television sector but several new companies, HiTV
, mytv and trend tv and startimes are starting to compete in this sector
, the government-owned national network, is available by satellite as well as broadcast.
consumers: DirecTV
and Dish Network
.
, although some viewers receive American signals through pirate decryption
. Whether such activity is grey market
or black market is the source of often heated debate between those who would like greater choice and those who argue that the protection of Canadian firms and Canadian culture
is more important. In October 2004, Quebec
Judge Danièle Côté ruled Canada's Radiocommunication Act
to be in direct violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
, insofar as it bans reception of unlicensed foreign television services. The judgment gave the federal government a one-year deadline to remedy this breach of the Constitution. However, this contradicts prior Supreme Court of Canada
decisions and was overturned on appeal. A Supreme Court of Canada decision in the case of Bell ExpressVu v. Richard Rex, made on April 26, 2002, confirms that provisions in the Radiocommunication Act forbid the illegal decoding of satellite television programming.
Canadian satellite providers continue to be plagued by the unquestionably black market devices which "pirate" or "steal" their signals as well as by a number of otherwise completely lawful devices which can be reprogrammed to receive pirate TV
.
Although there are no official statistics, the use of American satellite services in Canada appears to be declining as of 2004
Some would claim that this is probably due to a combination of increasingly aggressive police enforcement and an unfavourable exchange rate
between the Canadian
and U.S. currencies. As the U.S. dollar has been declining as of 2005 versus other international currencies, the decline in DirecTV viewership in Canada may well be related not to a cost difference as much as to the series of smart card swaps which have rendered the first three generations of DirecTV access cards (F, H and HU) all obsolete. Recently, Bell has begun to phase out satellite receivers in urban areas, replacing it with IPTV
transmitted over regular telephone lines.
, which has approximately 1.4 million subscribers in each of Brazil
and Mexico
and DirecTV
Latin America, which provides service to the rest of the Americas
, with a total of approximately 1.3 million subscribers. Pay-TV is not popular among Latin Americans because fees are expensive in PPP
terms.
The service offered in Brazil includes Digital TV with full Dolby Digital surround support, mts and multiple subtitle options, a first for the Brazilian market. A recent update to Sky's services in Brazil is Sky+ which allows the customer to record a program while watching another one and also Sky HD which currently provides up to 29 high definition channels. Services are however relatively expensive, therefore market penetration is still limited.
, was launched by the Khabar
news agency in 2002.
) launched Astro in 1996. It currently holds exclusive rights from the Malaysian government to offer satellite television broadcasting services in the country through the year 2017.
is the satellite television operator in Mongolia.
started experimental broadcasting of TV program using BS-2a satellite on May, 1984.
The satellite BS-2a was launched in preparation for the start of full scale 2-channel broadcasts. Broadcasting Satellite BS-2a was the first national DBS
(direct broadcasting satellite), transmitting signals directly into the home of TV viewers. Attitude control of the satellite was conducted using the 3 axial method (zero momentum), and design life was 5 years. The TV transponder units are designed to sufficiently amplify transmitted signals to enable reception by small, 40 or 60 cm home-use parabolic antennas
. The satellite was equipped with 3 TV transponders (including reserve units). However, one transponder malfunctioned 2 months after launch (March 23, 1984) and a second transponder malfunctioned 3 months after launch (May 3, 1984). So, the scheduled satellite broadcasting had to be hastily adjusted to test broadcasting on a single channel.
Later, NHK started regular service (NTSC
) and experimental HDTV broadcasting using BS-2b on June, 1989. Some Japanese producers of home electronic consumer devices began to deliver TVsets, VCRs and even home acoustic systems equipped by built-in satellite tuners or receiver
s. Such electronic goods had a specific BS logo.
On April, 1991, Japanese company JSB started pay TV service while BS-3 communication satellite was in use. In 1996 total number of households that receive satellite broadcasting exceeded 10 million.
The modern two satellite systems in use in Japan are BSAT and JCSAT; the modern WOWOW
Broadcasting Satellite digital service uses BSAT satellites, while other system of digital TV broadcasting SKY PerfecTV!
uses JCSAT satellites.
These services are provided by locally built satellites from ISRO such as [15] INSAT 4CR, INSAT 4A, INSAT-2E, INSAT-3C and INSAT-3E as well as private satellites such as the Dutch-based SES, Global-owned NSS 6, Thaicom-2 and Telstar 10.
, Thailand
, Bangkok
and UK
. Pakistan is upon the most successful countries in the world in television and in all the Islamic states of the world.
is the leading pay TV service of Thailand which operate cable TV in Bangkok
and satellite TV across the country. TrueVisions is owned by True Corporation. VIet Nam sat is just launched in 4/2008 and GMM Grammy
is the second pay TV service of Thailand.
has proven to be a far more feasible option than cable television, due to the vast distances between population centres. The first service to come online in Australia was Galaxy, which was later taken over by Cable Television giant Foxtel
, which now operates both cable and satellite services to all state capital cities (except Darwin and Hobart) and the whole of Western Australia. Its main metropolitan rival was Optus Vision, while rural areas are served by Austar
, both of which just rebroadcast Foxtel as of 2005. In 2006 SelecTV began operating, aiming at providing comparatively low cost packages and catering to specialised market segments. In 2010, SelecTV ceased operation and handed over all of their English-language content customers to Foxtel
.
, SKY Network Television
offers multichannel digital satellite TV, and once offered non-digital terrestrial UHF
service which was shutdown progressivley during the first half of 2010. The newly released Freeview service is also available on the Optus D1 satellite, as well as a High Definition digital terrestrial service.
satellites and Hotbird (operated by Eutelsat.) BSkyB
(known as Sky) serves the UK
. SKY Italia
, Canal Digitaal
and UPC being the main providers in Italy
, the Netherlands
and Central Europe
.
The overall market share of DBS satellite services in 2004 was 21.4% of all TV homes, however this highly varies from country to country. For example, in Germany, with many free-to-air
TV-stations, DBS market share is almost 40%, and in Belgium and the Netherlands, it’s only about 7%, due to the widespread cable networks with exclusive content.
and Far East. Each station had a 12-meter receiving parabolic antenna
and transmitters for re-broadcasting TV signal to local householders.
However, a large part of Soviet central regions were still not covered by transponders of Molniya satellites.
By 1976 Soviet engineers developed a relatively simple and inexpensive system of satellite television (especially for Central and Northern Siberia). It included geostationary satellites called Ekran equipped with powerful 300 W UHF transponders, a broadcasting uplink station and various simple receiving stations located in various towns and villages of Siberian region. The typical receiving station, also called Ekran, represented itself as a home-use analog
satellite
receiver
equipped with simple Yagi-Uda antenna. Later, Ekran satellites were replaced by more advanced Ekran-M series satellites.
In 1979 Soviet engineers developed Moskva (or Moscow) system of broadcasting and delivering of TV signal via satellites. New type of geostationary communication satellites, called Gorizont
, were launched. They were equipped by powerful onboard transponders, so the size of receiving parabolic antennas of downlink stations was reduced to 4 and 2.5 meters (in comparison of early 12- meter dishes of standard orbital downlink stations).
By 1989 an improved version of Moskva system of satellite television has been called Moskva Global'naya (or Moscow Global). The system included a few geostationary Gorizont and Express type of communication satellites. TV signal from Moscow Global’s satellites could be received in any country of planet except Canada and North-West of the USA.
Modern Russian satellite broadcasting services based on powerful geostationary buses such as Gals
, Express, Yamal
and Eutelsat
which provide a large quantity of free-to-air television channels to millions of householders. Pay-TV is growing in popularity amongst Russian TV viewers. The NTV Russia
news company, owned by Gazprom
, broadcasts the NTV Plus
package to 560,000 households, reaching over 1.5 million viewers.
Tricolor TV
(Russian: Триколор ТВ) the biggest satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been held since December 2005 from esv Eutelsat W4. Broadcasting in the Eastern regions began in December 2007.
The principle difference between Tricolor TV
and other Russian salellite TV operators is a pack of free channels broadcasts by Tricolor TV
. There are 12 federal channels including "Pervy", "Rossiya", "NTV", "STS", "Bibigon" and others in the free "Basic" pack. Except these, there are 19 more TV channels for the whole family. The budget pack of satellite channels turned to be very popular among Russian viewers. The number of Tricolor TV's subscribers is the largest in Russia. In December 2009 the audience of Tricolor TV
has reached a number of 6 000 000 households.
-
The first commercial DBS service in the United Kingdom
, Sky Television
, was launched in 1989 and used the newly launched ASTRA
satellite, providing 4 analogue TV channels. The channels and subsequent VideoCrypt
video encryption system used the existing PAL
broadcast standard. This gave Sky a distinct advantage over the winner of the UK state DBS licence, BSB
.
In the following year, after many delays, BSB
was launched, broadcasting five channels (Now, Galaxy, The Movie Channel
, The Power Station and The Sports Channel) in D-MAC
format and using the EuroCypher video encryption system which was based heavily on the General Instruments VideoCipher system used in the USA. While the BSB's broadcast standard and system was technologically more advanced than the PAL based Sky system and one of the main selling points of the BSB offering was the Squarial, an expensive flat plate antenna and LNB. Sky's system used conventional cheap dish and LNB technology. The BSB system used an integrated receiver / decoder whereas the Sky system had standalone decoders and integrated receiver decoders. This allowed Sky to market directly to an audience that already had satellite TV systems.
The competition between the two companies was fierce and bidding wars over the UK rights to movies. Sky kept costs to a bare minimum, operating from an industrial park in Isleworth
in West London. BSB had expensive offices in London (Marco Polo House
). The two services subsequently merged to form British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) though the new BSkyB was really Sky. The technologically more advanced BSB D-MAC/EuroCypher system was gradually replaced with Sky's VideoCrypt
video encryption system.
In 1994 17% of the group was floated on the London Stock Exchange
(with ADRs
listed on the New York Stock Exchange
), and Rupert Murdoch
’s News Corporation owns a 35% stake.
By 1999, following the launch of several more satellites (at 19.2°E by SES Astra), the number of channels had increased to around 60 and BSkyB launched the first subscription-based digital television platform in the UK, offering a range of 300 channels broadcast from the ASTRA
satellites at 28.2°E under the brand name Sky Digital. BSkyB’s analogue service was discontinued on 31 December 2001 and all customers have migrated to Sky Digital.
In May 2008, a free-to-air satellite service from the BBC and ITV was launched under the brand name Freesat
, carrying a variety of channels, including some content in HD formats.
which launched in 1987. With the launch of Astra 1A
, getting the TV3 channel got easier. The first Nordic-specific satellite, Tele-X
, was launched in 1989. The services directed at Scandinavia were then scattered among several satellites. In 1993, the former BSB satellites were bought by a Swedish and a Norwegian company, respectively. These two satellites were renamed Thor 1 and Sirius 1, moved to new positions and started broadcasting services intended for people in the Nordic region. With the launch of additional Thor and Sirius satellites later in the 1990s, Astra and other satellites were abandoned by the Nordic services with almost all Nordic satellite television migrating to the Sirius and Thor satellites.
Initially the basic channels were free-to-air. This caused several rights problems since viewers throughout Europe were able to see very much acquired English language programming as well as sports for free on the Nordic channels, although the channels only held broadcasting rights for specific countries. One way of avoiding that was to switch from PAL to the D2-MAC standard, hardly used anywhere outside the Nordic region. An unencrypted channel could still be seen in all the Nordic satellite homes, so eventually all channels went encrypted (several of them only being available in one country).
There are two competing satellite services: Canal Digital
(Norwegian Telenor
) and Viasat
(Kinnevik). Canal Digital launched in 1997 and was digital from the start, broadcasting from Thor. Kinnevik had been operating an analogue subscription service since the late 1980s, but waited until the year 2000 before launching a digital service. All analogue services from Thor and Sirius will have ceased in 2006, when the three remaining Danish channels go digital-only. The competition between Viasat and Canal Digital has caused some homes in Scandinavia to have to buy two set-top boxes and have two subscriptions to get the full range of channels. Viasat doesn't provide their own channels (TV3, TV3+, ZTV, TV1000 and the Viasat-branded channels) on the Canal Digital platform. Canal Digital does however have exclusive distribution of channels from SBS Broadcasting
, Discovery
, TV2 Denmark
and Eurosport
; for several years the Swedish SVT
and TV4
channels were also exclusive to Canal Digital.
has a high penetration of homes receiving TV channels via DTH satellite. One of the pioneers of free-to-air digital satellite television is considered to be MBC
, which began broadcasting in c band
through [Arabsat] and is the first network in the world to offer a free-to-air Western based English language movie channel to the Middle East audience via its spinoff channel MBC 2
. Its direct rival is considered to be Dubai
, UAE based One TV, earlier called Channel 33, which was the first channel in the Middle East to provide English language general entertainment programming for the expatriate community.
Nourmina Channel is the first satellite channel owned by a Jordanian national of the private sector, which broadcasts on Nile Sat reluctantly 12303H, which covers all the Arab countries, Africa and most parts of Europe
- The first digital DTH pay-TV network to provide Indian Entertainment was Orbit Satellite Television and Radio Network
broadcasting via Eurobird 2 (Ku band), later on Showtime Arabia
a joint venture between Viacom
(21% stake) and KIPCO
(79% stake) started broadcasting, via PanAmSat
(C band), but later switched over to Nilesat
(KU band
). Arab Radio and Television Network
(ART) now known as Arab Digital Distribution
although a late comer, gained ground by broadcasting exclusive sports events. Most of the popular channels are transmitting from these satellites and orbital positions: Arabsat at 26°E, AsiaSat
at 100.5°E and 105.5°E, Eutelsat
Hot Bird
at 13°E, Nilesat at 7°W, and PanAmSat at 68.5°E.
In Israel, Satellite TV services were introduced by YES! company, using Israeli based Amos
.
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
varies in the different regions around the world.
Africa
South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n-based Multichoice
MultiChoice
MultiChoice is a South African company which operates the DStv satellite television service, the main satellite TV service in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was formed out of the subscriber-management branch of the M-Net terrestrial pay TV company, and broadcasts the full range of M-Net channels on the...
's DStv
DStv
DStv is MultiChoice's multi-channel digital satellite TV service in Africa, launched in 1995. It operates from two satellites over Africa, broadcasting on Ku band via Eutelsat W7 and Intelsat 7 , which only requires a small satellite dish...
is the main digital satellite television provider in sub-Saharan Africa, broadcasting principally in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, but also in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
. Multichoice
MultiChoice
MultiChoice is a South African company which operates the DStv satellite television service, the main satellite TV service in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was formed out of the subscriber-management branch of the M-Net terrestrial pay TV company, and broadcasts the full range of M-Net channels on the...
's DStv
DStv
DStv is MultiChoice's multi-channel digital satellite TV service in Africa, launched in 1995. It operates from two satellites over Africa, broadcasting on Ku band via Eutelsat W7 and Intelsat 7 , which only requires a small satellite dish...
reaches out to 5 million paid suscribers on 31 March 2011 (ref: Naspers' annual report - http://www.balancingact-africa.com/reports/broadcast/african-broadcast-an-0).
Canal Horizons, owned by France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
's Canal+
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
and Vivendi, is the main provider in French-speaking
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. Another entrant into the satellite television circuit in Africa is MyTv Africa, a subsidiary of Dubai based Strong Technologies.
The launch of Free2view has made satellite TV available to the masses in Africa. Free2view currently broadcasts MSNBC as its exclusive news channel and is about to roll out additional channels.
GTV (Gateway TV) - to differentiate from Ghana Television (GTV)-, a British-based company, became the next contender in sub-saharan Africa providing digital satellite television. But on January 30th. 2009, the Board of Directors of Gateway Broadcast Services (GBS) approved plans to liquidate the company which was later shut down. GBS was the operator behind GTV, a popular, if niche Direct to Home (DTH) satellite Pay-TV service present in 22 African markets. The collapse of GBS was sudden for its employees, its customers and those who have long believed that there is mass-market potential in African pay-TV.
Ref: http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/broadcast/issue-no47/top-story/death-of-a-dream-afr/bc
Star DTV, a chinese company which launched in 2009 has managed to reach about 800,000 households in Oct. 2011.
In 2010, ZAP
ZAP (satellite television)
ZAP is a digital satellite television provider mainly for Portuguese speaking countries in sub-Saharan Africa. ZAP launched in Angola in 2010, providing a subscription based TV service covering the sub-Saharan countries to south of Angola...
launched in Angola, providing digital satellite television mainly for Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
speaking countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Satellite television has been far more successful in Africa than cable, primarily because the infrastructure for cable television does not exist and would be expensive to install since majority of Africans cannot afford paid cable television. Furthermore, maintaining a cable network is expensive due to the need to cover larger and more sparsely populated areas though there are some terrestrial pay-TV and MMDS services.
Nigeria
Traditionally DStvDStv
DStv is MultiChoice's multi-channel digital satellite TV service in Africa, launched in 1995. It operates from two satellites over Africa, broadcasting on Ku band via Eutelsat W7 and Intelsat 7 , which only requires a small satellite dish...
had held a monopoly over Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
's Satellite television sector but several new companies, HiTV
HiTV
High Television is Entertainment Highway's multi-channel digital satellite TV service in Nigeria, launched in 2007. It used Digital Terrestrial technology and launched Direct to Home Satellite technology on the August 1, 2007....
, mytv and trend tv and startimes are starting to compete in this sector
Sudan
Sudan TVSudan TV
Sudan TV or Sudan National Broadcasting Corporation is an Arabic language television network. It is Sudan's national network and is government-owned and operated. Sudan TV is one of six television networks in the country. -History:...
, the government-owned national network, is available by satellite as well as broadcast.
United States
Currently, there are two primary satellite television providers of subscription based service available to United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
consumers: DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...
and Dish Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...
.
Canada
Currently, there are two primary satellite television providers of subscription based service available to Canadian consumers: Bell TV and Shaw Direct. The CRTC has refused to license American satellite services, but nonetheless hundreds of thousands (up to a million by some estimates) of Canadians access or have accessed American services — usually these services have to be billed to an American address and are paid for in U.S. dollarsUnited States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
, although some viewers receive American signals through pirate decryption
Pirate decryption
Pirate decryption most often refers to the reception of compromised pay TV or pay radio signals without authorization from the original broadcaster...
. Whether such activity is grey market
Grey market
A grey market or gray market also known as parallel market is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels which, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer...
or black market is the source of often heated debate between those who would like greater choice and those who argue that the protection of Canadian firms and Canadian culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
is more important. In October 2004, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
Judge Danièle Côté ruled Canada's Radiocommunication Act
Radiocommunication Act
The Radiocommunication Act is an Act of Parliament respecting radiocommunication in Canada.-External links:*...
to be in direct violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982...
, insofar as it bans reception of unlicensed foreign television services. The judgment gave the federal government a one-year deadline to remedy this breach of the Constitution. However, this contradicts prior Supreme Court of Canada
Supreme Court of Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada and is the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts, and its decisions...
decisions and was overturned on appeal. A Supreme Court of Canada decision in the case of Bell ExpressVu v. Richard Rex, made on April 26, 2002, confirms that provisions in the Radiocommunication Act forbid the illegal decoding of satellite television programming.
Canadian satellite providers continue to be plagued by the unquestionably black market devices which "pirate" or "steal" their signals as well as by a number of otherwise completely lawful devices which can be reprogrammed to receive pirate TV
Pirate decryption
Pirate decryption most often refers to the reception of compromised pay TV or pay radio signals without authorization from the original broadcaster...
.
Although there are no official statistics, the use of American satellite services in Canada appears to be declining as of 2004
Some would claim that this is probably due to a combination of increasingly aggressive police enforcement and an unfavourable exchange rate
Exchange rate
In finance, an exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency...
between the Canadian
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
and U.S. currencies. As the U.S. dollar has been declining as of 2005 versus other international currencies, the decline in DirecTV viewership in Canada may well be related not to a cost difference as much as to the series of smart card swaps which have rendered the first three generations of DirecTV access cards (F, H and HU) all obsolete. Recently, Bell has begun to phase out satellite receivers in urban areas, replacing it with IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...
transmitted over regular telephone lines.
Latin America
Latin America’s main satellite system are SKY MéxicoSKY México
SKY México is a company that operates a subscription television service in the Mexico, Central America, Dominican Republic area. It produces TV content, and owns several TV channels...
, which has approximately 1.4 million subscribers in each of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...
Latin America, which provides service to the rest of the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
, with a total of approximately 1.3 million subscribers. Pay-TV is not popular among Latin Americans because fees are expensive in PPP
Purchasing power parity
In economics, purchasing power parity is a condition between countries where an amount of money has the same purchasing power in different countries. The prices of the goods between the countries would only reflect the exchange rates...
terms.
The service offered in Brazil includes Digital TV with full Dolby Digital surround support, mts and multiple subtitle options, a first for the Brazilian market. A recent update to Sky's services in Brazil is Sky+ which allows the customer to record a program while watching another one and also Sky HD which currently provides up to 29 high definition channels. Services are however relatively expensive, therefore market penetration is still limited.
Bangladesh
There are several satellite providers in Bangladesh. The main ones are listed below:- Bangla Vision
- NTVNTV (Bangladesh)NTV is a Bengali language satellite television channel based in Bangladesh. It started operation in 2003. It is one of the most popular Bengali TV channels in the country. In the anniversary of the channel, the founder expressed interest in creating NTV2 to satisfy the watchers further, however he...
- RTVRTV (Bangladesh)RTV is a satellite television channel broadcast from Bangladesh. It was launched on 26 December 2005 by the same people that ran NTV Bangla. It mainly broadcasts programs in Bangla...
- ATN BanglaATN BanglaATN Bangla is a Bengali language digital cable television channel. It transmits from its studio in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The channel is transmitted in South Asia, the Middle-east, Europe, and North America. The channel offers a wide variety of programming including news, movies, dramas, talk shows,...
- Channel IChannel IChannel i is a privately owned Television network in Bangladesh. It is owned by the Impress Group, among the largest conglomerates in Bangladesh with interests in textiles, pharmaceuticals and media....
- Channel OneChannel One (Bangladesh)Channel One is a Bengali language satellite television channel from Bangladesh. It started broadcasting from Dhaka on 24 January 1993.It is owned by the One Entertainment Limited, a sister concern of One Group....
- Boishaki TV
- ETV
- Desh TVDesh TVDesh TV is the latest addition to the long list of community TV channels in the UK/EU.The channel has started test transmission from the Telstar 10 satellite. During April 2011, Desh TV began testing on Eurobird 1, ahead of a launch on the Sky platform in the United Kingdom and Ireland on April...
- Diganta TelevisionDiganta TelevisionDiganta Television is a private satellite TV channel in Bangladesh, founded in 2007. This is a project of Diganta Media Corporation, which also publishes a daily newspaper "Daily Naya Diganta". Diganta TV formally started its broadcasting on the 28th August, 2008 with 16 hours of news and 8 hours...
- Islamic TVIslamic TVIslamic TV...
Kazakhstan
The first satellite TV channel in Kazakstan, CaspioNetCaspioNet
CaspioNet is the first satellite TV channel of Kazakhstan. It is run by the Khabar news agency. Its name reflects the intention to broadcast information about the entire Caspian Sea region....
, was launched by the Khabar
Khabar
The Khabar Agency is a major media outlet in Kazakhstan. It was established in 1995, known originally as the National Television News Agency. It is currently one of the largest networks in the country, and broadcasts daily in Russian and Kazakh. Additionally, Khabar runs the satellite channel...
news agency in 2002.
Malaysia
Malaysia's sole satellite television operator, Measat Broadcast Network Systems (a subsidiary of Astro All Asia Networks plcAstro All Asia Networks plc
Astro Holdings Sdn Bhd is a Malaysia investment holding media and entertainment company that began in the form of a pay digital direct broadcast satellite radio and television service, Astro.- Corporate Information :...
) launched Astro in 1996. It currently holds exclusive rights from the Malaysian government to offer satellite television broadcasting services in the country through the year 2017.
Mongolia
The Naran station (aka Orbit Station) is first satellite television in Mongolia. In 1991, Naran Station broadcast one channel, which is MNB. In 2005, Naran station extended the channel list up to 4 FTA channels. In 2010 they stopped television broadcast. Government has decided to allow private company does the service in 2008. DDishTV broadcast 18 channels, including 15 local channels and 3 foreign channels since 2008. DDishTV LLCDDishTV LLC
DDISHTV is a Mongolian satellite TV and Internet provider company led by Ganbold Dendev .A member of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union , DDISHTV was established in January 2008 to carry out Mongolian government’s proposal to broadcast more television channels in the countryside in high quality...
is the satellite television operator in Mongolia.
Japan
The medium-scale Broadcasting Satellite for Experimental Purposes (BSE) was planned by Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MOPT) and developed by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) since 1974. After that, the first Japanese experimental broadcasting satellite, called BSE or Yuri, was launched in 1978. NHKNHK
NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....
started experimental broadcasting of TV program using BS-2a satellite on May, 1984.
The satellite BS-2a was launched in preparation for the start of full scale 2-channel broadcasts. Broadcasting Satellite BS-2a was the first national DBS
Direct broadcast satellite
Direct broadcast satellite is a term used to refer to satellite television broadcasts intended for home reception.A designation broader than DBS would be direct-to-home signals, or DTH. This has initially distinguished the transmissions directly intended for home viewers from cable television...
(direct broadcasting satellite), transmitting signals directly into the home of TV viewers. Attitude control of the satellite was conducted using the 3 axial method (zero momentum), and design life was 5 years. The TV transponder units are designed to sufficiently amplify transmitted signals to enable reception by small, 40 or 60 cm home-use parabolic antennas
Antenna (radio)
An antenna is an electrical device which converts electric currents into radio waves, and vice versa. It is usually used with a radio transmitter or radio receiver...
. The satellite was equipped with 3 TV transponders (including reserve units). However, one transponder malfunctioned 2 months after launch (March 23, 1984) and a second transponder malfunctioned 3 months after launch (May 3, 1984). So, the scheduled satellite broadcasting had to be hastily adjusted to test broadcasting on a single channel.
Later, NHK started regular service (NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
) and experimental HDTV broadcasting using BS-2b on June, 1989. Some Japanese producers of home electronic consumer devices began to deliver TVsets, VCRs and even home acoustic systems equipped by built-in satellite tuners or receiver
Digital media receiver
A digital media receiver , also commonly referred to as a media extender, media streamer, digital media hub, or digital media adapter , is a home entertainment device that can connect to a home network to retrieve digital media files from a personal computer or other networked media server and...
s. Such electronic goods had a specific BS logo.
On April, 1991, Japanese company JSB started pay TV service while BS-3 communication satellite was in use. In 1996 total number of households that receive satellite broadcasting exceeded 10 million.
The modern two satellite systems in use in Japan are BSAT and JCSAT; the modern WOWOW
WOWOW
WOWOW was the first private satellite broadcasting and pay TV station in Japan. It has its headquarters on the 21st floor of the Akasaka Park Building in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo...
Broadcasting Satellite digital service uses BSAT satellites, while other system of digital TV broadcasting SKY PerfecTV!
SKY PerfecTV!
SKY PerfecTV! is a direct broadcast satellite service that provides satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services to households in Japan, owned by parent company SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation....
uses JCSAT satellites.
India
Over 300 TV Satellite channels are broadcast in India. This includes channels from the state-owned Doordarshan, News Corporation owned STAR TV, Sony owned Sony Entertainment Television, Sun Network and Zee TV. Direct To Home service is provided by DishTv, Airtel Digital Tv, Reliance BIG TV, DD Direct Plus, Videocon d2h, Sun Direct DTH and TataSky. Few of them have already started their premium HD services.These services are provided by locally built satellites from ISRO such as [15] INSAT 4CR, INSAT 4A, INSAT-2E, INSAT-3C and INSAT-3E as well as private satellites such as the Dutch-based SES, Global-owned NSS 6, Thaicom-2 and Telstar 10.
Pakistan
In the recent years, there has been a lot of investment in television industry in Pakistan. There are more than 200 Satellite channels operating directly inside Pakistan and about 40 operating their broadcasting from DubaiDubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
and UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Pakistan is upon the most successful countries in the world in television and in all the Islamic states of the world.
Philippines
- Dream Satellite TVDream Satellite TVDream Satellite TV is the first all-digital Direct-To-Home television broadcasting service via satellite in the Philippines.Broadcasting from the Dream Broadcast Center located at the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga...
is pay DTH service of Philippine Multimedia Service Inc. (PMSI) - Cignal Digital TVCignal Digital TVCignal Digital TV is a subscription-based Direct-To-Home satellite television service provider in the Philippines. Cignal is owned by MediaScape, a wholly owned subsidiary of the MediaQuest Holdings, Inc...
is pay DTH service of Mediascape Inc. - G SatG SatG Sat is a subscription-based Direct-To-Home satellite television service commercially available in the Philippines...
is pay DTH service of FUBC.
Thailand
TrueVisionsTrueVisions
TrueVisions is Thailand's leading cable satellite television operator, broadcasting largely in English. Now owned by the True Corporation, the company was formerly known as the United Broadcasting Corporation , but it was rebranded in February 2007....
is the leading pay TV service of Thailand which operate cable TV in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
and satellite TV across the country. TrueVisions is owned by True Corporation. VIet Nam sat is just launched in 4/2008 and GMM Grammy
GMM Grammy
GMM Grammy Public Company Limited is the largest media conglomerate entertainment company in Thailand. It claims a 70% share of the Thai entertainment industry. Artists on Grammy include Bird McIntyre and Loso...
is the second pay TV service of Thailand.
Australia
Satellite television in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
has proven to be a far more feasible option than cable television, due to the vast distances between population centres. The first service to come online in Australia was Galaxy, which was later taken over by Cable Television giant Foxtel
Foxtel
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company, operating cable, direct broadcast satellite television and IPTV services. It was formed in 1995 through a joint venture established between Telstra and News Corporation....
, which now operates both cable and satellite services to all state capital cities (except Darwin and Hobart) and the whole of Western Australia. Its main metropolitan rival was Optus Vision, while rural areas are served by Austar
Austar
Austar is an Australian telecommunications company. Its main business activity is Subscription Television but it is also involved with internet access and mobile phones...
, both of which just rebroadcast Foxtel as of 2005. In 2006 SelecTV began operating, aiming at providing comparatively low cost packages and catering to specialised market segments. In 2010, SelecTV ceased operation and handed over all of their English-language content customers to Foxtel
Foxtel
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company, operating cable, direct broadcast satellite television and IPTV services. It was formed in 1995 through a joint venture established between Telstra and News Corporation....
.
New Zealand
In New ZealandNew Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, SKY Network Television
SKY Network Television
Sky Network Television Limited , , is a New Zealand pay television service. On 30 June 2011, Sky had 829,421 subscribers, which comprises:*808,617 digital subscribers*20,840 other subscribers...
offers multichannel digital satellite TV, and once offered non-digital terrestrial UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...
service which was shutdown progressivley during the first half of 2010. The newly released Freeview service is also available on the Optus D1 satellite, as well as a High Definition digital terrestrial service.
Continental Western Europe
In Europe, DBS satellite services are found mainly on AstraSES Astra
Astra is the name for the geostationary communication satellites, both individually and as a group, which are owned and operated by SES S.A., a global satellite operator based in Betzdorf, in eastern Luxembourg. The name is sometimes also used to describe the channels broadcasting from these...
satellites and Hotbird (operated by Eutelsat.) BSkyB
British Sky Broadcasting
British Sky Broadcasting Group plc is a satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephony services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with operations in the United Kingdom and the Ireland....
(known as Sky) serves the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. SKY Italia
Sky Italia
Sky Italia S.r.l. is an Italian digital satellite television platform owned by News Corporation launched on 1 August 2003, when the former platforms TELE+ and Stream TV merged together...
, Canal Digitaal
Canal Digitaal
CanalDigitaal is a provider of digital television via satellite for the Dutch market, using the Astra satellites at 19.2° east and the Astra 3A satellite at 23.5° east ....
and UPC being the main providers in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
.
The overall market share of DBS satellite services in 2004 was 21.4% of all TV homes, however this highly varies from country to country. For example, in Germany, with many free-to-air
Free-to-air
Free-to-air describes television and radio services broadcast in clear form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription or one-off fee...
TV-stations, DBS market share is almost 40%, and in Belgium and the Netherlands, it’s only about 7%, due to the widespread cable networks with exclusive content.
Russian Federation
The first Soviet communication satellite, called Molniya (Молния, or "Lightning"), was launched in 1965. By November, 1967 the national system of satellite television, called Orbita was deployed. The system consisted of 3 highly elliptical Molniya satellites, Moscow-based ground uplink facilities and about 20 downlink stations, located in cities and towns of remote regions of SiberiaSiberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Far East. Each station had a 12-meter receiving parabolic antenna
Parabolic antenna
A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves. The most common form is shaped like a dish and is popularly called a dish antenna or parabolic dish...
and transmitters for re-broadcasting TV signal to local householders.
However, a large part of Soviet central regions were still not covered by transponders of Molniya satellites.
By 1976 Soviet engineers developed a relatively simple and inexpensive system of satellite television (especially for Central and Northern Siberia). It included geostationary satellites called Ekran equipped with powerful 300 W UHF transponders, a broadcasting uplink station and various simple receiving stations located in various towns and villages of Siberian region. The typical receiving station, also called Ekran, represented itself as a home-use analog
Analog transmission
Analog transmission is a transmission method of conveying voice, data, image, signal or video information using a continuous signal which varies in amplitude, phase, or some other property in proportion to that of a variable...
satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
receiver
Digital media receiver
A digital media receiver , also commonly referred to as a media extender, media streamer, digital media hub, or digital media adapter , is a home entertainment device that can connect to a home network to retrieve digital media files from a personal computer or other networked media server and...
equipped with simple Yagi-Uda antenna. Later, Ekran satellites were replaced by more advanced Ekran-M series satellites.
In 1979 Soviet engineers developed Moskva (or Moscow) system of broadcasting and delivering of TV signal via satellites. New type of geostationary communication satellites, called Gorizont
Gorizont
Gorizont, , GRAU index 11F662, is a series of 35 Russian, previously Soviet, geosynchronous communication satellites launched between 1978 and 2000. The programme was started in order to develop a satellite system to relay coverage of the 1980 Olympic Games from Moscow. The first four satellites...
, were launched. They were equipped by powerful onboard transponders, so the size of receiving parabolic antennas of downlink stations was reduced to 4 and 2.5 meters (in comparison of early 12- meter dishes of standard orbital downlink stations).
By 1989 an improved version of Moskva system of satellite television has been called Moskva Global'naya (or Moscow Global). The system included a few geostationary Gorizont and Express type of communication satellites. TV signal from Moscow Global’s satellites could be received in any country of planet except Canada and North-West of the USA.
Modern Russian satellite broadcasting services based on powerful geostationary buses such as Gals
Gals
Gals is a municipality in the Seeland administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.-Geography:Gals has an area, , of . Of this area, or 53.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 34.0% is forested...
, Express, Yamal
Yamal (satellite)
Yamal is a communication satellite developed by Gazprom Space Systems for Russian Direct-To-Home television. The first satellite of the Yamal series was launched by September 6, 1999.-External links:**...
and Eutelsat
Eutelsat
Eutelsat S.A. is a French-based satellite provider. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, as well as the Middle East, Africa, India and significant parts of Asia and the Americas, it is one of the world's three leading satellite operators in terms of revenues.Eutelsat’s satellites...
which provide a large quantity of free-to-air television channels to millions of householders. Pay-TV is growing in popularity amongst Russian TV viewers. The NTV Russia
NTV Russia
NTV is a Russian television channel. As a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most, it was a pioneer in the post-Soviet independent television media, but was later taken over by state-owned Gazprom.- History :...
news company, owned by Gazprom
Gazprom
Open Joint Stock Company Gazprom is the largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company. Its headquarters are in Cheryomushki District, South-Western Administrative Okrug, Moscow...
, broadcasts the NTV Plus
NTV Plus
NTV Plus is the brand name for the Russian digital satellite television service from NTV, transmitted from Eutelsat's W4 satellite at 36.0°E & from Bonum 1 at 56.0°E...
package to 560,000 households, reaching over 1.5 million viewers.
Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV the biggest Russian satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been held since December 2005 from esv Eutelsat W4...
(Russian: Триколор ТВ) the biggest satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been held since December 2005 from esv Eutelsat W4. Broadcasting in the Eastern regions began in December 2007.
The principle difference between Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV the biggest Russian satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been held since December 2005 from esv Eutelsat W4...
and other Russian salellite TV operators is a pack of free channels broadcasts by Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV the biggest Russian satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been held since December 2005 from esv Eutelsat W4...
. There are 12 federal channels including "Pervy", "Rossiya", "NTV", "STS", "Bibigon" and others in the free "Basic" pack. Except these, there are 19 more TV channels for the whole family. The budget pack of satellite channels turned to be very popular among Russian viewers. The number of Tricolor TV's subscribers is the largest in Russia. In December 2009 the audience of Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV
Tricolor TV the biggest Russian satellite television operator. It broadcasts a pack of TV channels in the European part of Russia and most of Siberian, Ural and Far East regions. Broadcasting in the European part has been held since December 2005 from esv Eutelsat W4...
has reached a number of 6 000 000 households.
-
United Kingdom and Ireland
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Sky Television
Sky Television plc
Sky Television plc was a public limited company which operated its four-channel satellite television service, launched by Rupert Murdoch's News International on 5 February 1989...
, was launched in 1989 and used the newly launched ASTRA
SES Astra
Astra is the name for the geostationary communication satellites, both individually and as a group, which are owned and operated by SES S.A., a global satellite operator based in Betzdorf, in eastern Luxembourg. The name is sometimes also used to describe the channels broadcasting from these...
satellite, providing 4 analogue TV channels. The channels and subsequent VideoCrypt
VideoCrypt
VideoCrypt is a cryptographic, smartcard-based conditional access television encryption system that scrambles analogue pay-TV signals. It was introduced in 1989 by News Datacom and was used initially by Sky TV and subsequently by several other broadcasters on the SES Astra satellites at 19.2°...
video encryption system used the existing PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
broadcast standard. This gave Sky a distinct advantage over the winner of the UK state DBS licence, BSB
British Satellite Broadcasting
British Satellite Broadcasting was a British television company which provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom...
.
In the following year, after many delays, BSB
British Satellite Broadcasting
British Satellite Broadcasting was a British television company which provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom...
was launched, broadcasting five channels (Now, Galaxy, The Movie Channel
The Movie Channel (UK)
For the unrelated American service, see The Movie ChannelThe Movie Channel was a British television channel, which only showed movies. Launched on BSB in 1990, The Movie Channel was a predecessor of some of the Sky Movies channels, having survived the merger with Sky Television, another satellite...
, The Power Station and The Sports Channel) in D-MAC
Multiplexed Analogue Components
Multiplexed Analogue Components was a satellite television transmission standard, originally proposed for use on a Europe-wide terrestrial HDTV system, although it was never used terrestrially.- Technical overview :...
format and using the EuroCypher video encryption system which was based heavily on the General Instruments VideoCipher system used in the USA. While the BSB's broadcast standard and system was technologically more advanced than the PAL based Sky system and one of the main selling points of the BSB offering was the Squarial, an expensive flat plate antenna and LNB. Sky's system used conventional cheap dish and LNB technology. The BSB system used an integrated receiver / decoder whereas the Sky system had standalone decoders and integrated receiver decoders. This allowed Sky to market directly to an audience that already had satellite TV systems.
The competition between the two companies was fierce and bidding wars over the UK rights to movies. Sky kept costs to a bare minimum, operating from an industrial park in Isleworth
Isleworth
Isleworth is a small town of Saxon origin sited within the London Borough of Hounslow in west London, England. It lies immediately east of the town of Hounslow and west of the River Thames and its tributary the River Crane. Isleworth's original area of settlement, alongside the Thames, is known as...
in West London. BSB had expensive offices in London (Marco Polo House
Marco Polo House
Marco Polo House is a large marble- and glass-clad office building at 346 Queenstown Road facing Battersea Park in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built in 1987, to a design by postmodernist architect Ian Pollard....
). The two services subsequently merged to form British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) though the new BSkyB was really Sky. The technologically more advanced BSB D-MAC/EuroCypher system was gradually replaced with Sky's VideoCrypt
VideoCrypt
VideoCrypt is a cryptographic, smartcard-based conditional access television encryption system that scrambles analogue pay-TV signals. It was introduced in 1989 by News Datacom and was used initially by Sky TV and subsequently by several other broadcasters on the SES Astra satellites at 19.2°...
video encryption system.
In 1994 17% of the group was floated on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
(with ADRs
American Depositary Receipt
An American depositary receipt is a negotiable security that represents the underlying securities of a non-U.S. company that trades in the US financial markets...
listed on the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
), and Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
’s News Corporation owns a 35% stake.
By 1999, following the launch of several more satellites (at 19.2°E by SES Astra), the number of channels had increased to around 60 and BSkyB launched the first subscription-based digital television platform in the UK, offering a range of 300 channels broadcast from the ASTRA
SES Astra
Astra is the name for the geostationary communication satellites, both individually and as a group, which are owned and operated by SES S.A., a global satellite operator based in Betzdorf, in eastern Luxembourg. The name is sometimes also used to describe the channels broadcasting from these...
satellites at 28.2°E under the brand name Sky Digital. BSkyB’s analogue service was discontinued on 31 December 2001 and all customers have migrated to Sky Digital.
In May 2008, a free-to-air satellite service from the BBC and ITV was launched under the brand name Freesat
Freesat
Freesat is a free-to-air digital satellite television joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc, serving the United Kingdom. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008...
, carrying a variety of channels, including some content in HD formats.
Nordic countries
The first satellite service specifically set to the Nordic region was TV3TV3 (Viasat)
TV3 is the brand name used by Viasat's flagship channels in Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and Slovenia. Viasat is part of the Swedish media company Modern Times Group...
which launched in 1987. With the launch of Astra 1A
Astra 1A
Astra 1A was the first satellite launched and operated by SES . During its early days, it was often referred to as the Astra Satellite, as SES only operated one satellite originally....
, getting the TV3 channel got easier. The first Nordic-specific satellite, Tele-X
Tele-X
Tele-X was the first communications satellite serving the Nordic countries. It was launched with an Ariane 2 rocket from Kourou, French Guyana, on April 2, 1989. On January 16, 1998, its fuel was exhausted and it was moved into graveyard orbit...
, was launched in 1989. The services directed at Scandinavia were then scattered among several satellites. In 1993, the former BSB satellites were bought by a Swedish and a Norwegian company, respectively. These two satellites were renamed Thor 1 and Sirius 1, moved to new positions and started broadcasting services intended for people in the Nordic region. With the launch of additional Thor and Sirius satellites later in the 1990s, Astra and other satellites were abandoned by the Nordic services with almost all Nordic satellite television migrating to the Sirius and Thor satellites.
Initially the basic channels were free-to-air. This caused several rights problems since viewers throughout Europe were able to see very much acquired English language programming as well as sports for free on the Nordic channels, although the channels only held broadcasting rights for specific countries. One way of avoiding that was to switch from PAL to the D2-MAC standard, hardly used anywhere outside the Nordic region. An unencrypted channel could still be seen in all the Nordic satellite homes, so eventually all channels went encrypted (several of them only being available in one country).
There are two competing satellite services: Canal Digital
Canal Digital
Canal Digital is a Scandinavian television distributor and internet service provider that was founded in March 1997 as a joint venture between the French pay-TV company Canal+ and the Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor...
(Norwegian Telenor
Telenor
Telenor Group is the incumbent telecommunications company in Norway, with headquarters located at Fornebu, close to Oslo. Today, Telenor Group is mostly an international wireless carrier with operations in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Asia, working predominantly under the Telenor brand...
) and Viasat
Viasat
Viasat is a DBS distributor and TV broadcaster, owned by the Swedish media conglomerate Modern Times Group. Broadcasting from London, the target markets are in the Nordic and the Baltic Countries...
(Kinnevik). Canal Digital launched in 1997 and was digital from the start, broadcasting from Thor. Kinnevik had been operating an analogue subscription service since the late 1980s, but waited until the year 2000 before launching a digital service. All analogue services from Thor and Sirius will have ceased in 2006, when the three remaining Danish channels go digital-only. The competition between Viasat and Canal Digital has caused some homes in Scandinavia to have to buy two set-top boxes and have two subscriptions to get the full range of channels. Viasat doesn't provide their own channels (TV3, TV3+, ZTV, TV1000 and the Viasat-branded channels) on the Canal Digital platform. Canal Digital does however have exclusive distribution of channels from SBS Broadcasting
SBS Broadcasting Group
SBS Broadcasting Group was a European broadcasting group, operating commercial television, premium pay channels, radio stations and related print businesses in Western and Central and Eastern Europe...
, Discovery
Discovery Communications
Discovery Communications, Inc. is an American global media and entertainment company. The company started as a single channel in 1985, The Discovery Channel. Today, DCI has global operations offering 28 network entertainment brands on more than 100 channels in more than 180 countries in 39...
, TV2 Denmark
TV 2 (Denmark)
TV 2 is a publicly owned television station in Denmark based in Odense. The station began broadcasting on 1 October 1988, thereby ending the television monopoly previously exercised by the Danmarks Radio ....
and Eurosport
Eurosport
Eurosport is a pan-European television sport network operated by French broadcaster TF1 Group. The network of channels are available in 59 countries, in 20 different languages providing viewers with European and international sporting events...
; for several years the Swedish SVT
Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television AB , Sweden's Television, is a national television broadcaster based in Sweden, funded by a compulsory fee to be paid by all television owners...
and TV4
TV4 AB
TV4 Group is a Swedish media company that owns the largest commercial television channel in Sweden, TV4.Since 2007, the company is fully owned by Bonnier through Nordic Broadcasting Oy...
channels were also exclusive to Canal Digital.
Middle East & North Africa
The Middle EastMiddle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
has a high penetration of homes receiving TV channels via DTH satellite. One of the pioneers of free-to-air digital satellite television is considered to be MBC
MBC 1
MBC is a free-to-air, pan-Arab general television channel.Satellite transmission started from London in September 1991, making MBC the first independent Arabic satellite TV station, with an estimated audience of more than 130 million Arabic-speaking people around the world.MBC has recently moved...
, which began broadcasting in c band
C band
The C band is a name given to certain portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, including wavelengths of microwaves that are used for long-distance radio telecommunications. The IEEE C-band - and its slight variations - contains frequency ranges that are used for many satellite communications...
through [Arabsat] and is the first network in the world to offer a free-to-air Western based English language movie channel to the Middle East audience via its spinoff channel MBC 2
MBC 2
MBC 2, formerly Channel 2, is a free-to-air 24-hour movie channel owned by the MBC Group. The channel has broadcast as a satellite TV channel since 2002...
. Its direct rival is considered to be Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
, UAE based One TV, earlier called Channel 33, which was the first channel in the Middle East to provide English language general entertainment programming for the expatriate community.
Nourmina Channel is the first satellite channel owned by a Jordanian national of the private sector, which broadcasts on Nile Sat reluctantly 12303H, which covers all the Arab countries, Africa and most parts of Europe
- The first digital DTH pay-TV network to provide Indian Entertainment was Orbit Satellite Television and Radio Network
Orbit Satellite Television and Radio Network
Orbit Communications Company was a privately owned Pay TV network, operating in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Owned by Saudi Arabia-based Mawarid Holding , it was the first fully digital, multi-channel, multi-lingual, pay television service in the Middle East and North Africa...
broadcasting via Eurobird 2 (Ku band), later on Showtime Arabia
Showtime Arabia
Showtime Arabia, as it was called to distinguish itself from its U.S. counterpart , was a subscription television service in the Middle East and North Africa. It was a joint venture between KIPCO and CBS Corporation , CBS Corp being a minor partner...
a joint venture between Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
(21% stake) and KIPCO
KIPCO
Kuwait Projects Company , popularly known as KIPCO, is one of the premier investment holding companies in the Middle East and North Africa region. KIPCO has substantial ownership interests in a diversified portfolio of companies in Europe, the Middle East, and the USA...
(79% stake) started broadcasting, via PanAmSat
PanAmSat
The former PanAmSat Corporation founded in 1984 by Reynold Anselmo, was a satellite service provider headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. It operated a fleet of communications satellites used by the entertainment industry, news agencies, internet service providers, government agencies, and...
(C band), but later switched over to Nilesat
Nilesat
Nilesat is an Egyptian company, and the name of a series of Egyptian communications satellites. It was established in 1996 with the purpose of operating Egyptian satellites and their associated ground control station and uplinking facilities...
(KU band
Ku band
The Kμ band is a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies. This symbol refers to —in other words, the band directly below the K-band...
). Arab Radio and Television Network
Arab Radio and Television Network
Arab Radio and Television Network is an Arabic-language television network characterized by its multitude of channels. It is based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The company was founded in October 1993 by Saleh Abdullah Kamel, a Saudi businessman...
(ART) now known as Arab Digital Distribution
Arab Digital Distribution
Arab Digital Distribution is a provider of pay television and interactive and digital services across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe...
although a late comer, gained ground by broadcasting exclusive sports events. Most of the popular channels are transmitting from these satellites and orbital positions: Arabsat at 26°E, AsiaSat
AsiaSat
Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. is a commercial operator of communication spacecraft. AsiaSat is based in Hong Kong with two major shareholders, CITIC and General Electric.-Satellites:...
at 100.5°E and 105.5°E, Eutelsat
Eutelsat
Eutelsat S.A. is a French-based satellite provider. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, as well as the Middle East, Africa, India and significant parts of Asia and the Americas, it is one of the world's three leading satellite operators in terms of revenues.Eutelsat’s satellites...
Hot Bird
Hot Bird
Hot Bird is the name of a popular family of satellites operated by Eutelsat, located at 13°E over the Equator and with a transmitting footprint over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East....
at 13°E, Nilesat at 7°W, and PanAmSat at 68.5°E.
In Israel, Satellite TV services were introduced by YES! company, using Israeli based Amos
Amos (satellite)
AMOS is a name for a series of Israeli communications satellites. All AMOS satellites are operated by Spacecom and are developed by its partner, Israel Aerospace Industries ....
.