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There is a long, very scientific answer to the question, how does satellite TV work. There is also a shorter version that is way more interesting. We’re going to go with the shorter version and apologize in advance to the scientific types who will cringe when they read this. As far as most people thinking that dishes are new, well they are not. The first satellite for TV was shot into space in’62.

The old nine foot satellite dishes came with remote controls that were quickly lost. These satellites are still around because they have a forever life expectancy and work great. People who use them now just have the neighbors come over and help move the dish when they want to change satellites. They sit as a monument in most back yards. Big, grey, daunting. But, they have, and continue to, provide a superb picture on any television.

Besides that a person who had one of these dishes was not required to mow about half of the lawn, you had unlimited television channels. Most of the channels came from other countries. This was because no one who owned a dish actually knew where to point it to get specific channels. So, a person in one region could get channels from a country thousands of miles away.

Once the satellites became more popular, providers started shooting satellites with transponders up regularly. These geostationary satellites orbit at the same speed as the earth so they don’t seem to be moving. This made reception even better and it was lots easier to find channels and countries because the satellites were identified. As people became more knowledgeable about where satellites were located they started creating their own programming guides. Those have now been replaced with the onscreen guides provided by the satellites.

Well, nine foot dishes just have never really caught on as a yard ornament in cities and they wanted satellite television also. So, satellite providers came up with little’” dishes that could be put just about anywhere on a house with a clear southern exposure and started beaming programs from all of the satellites to the dishes. No more calling the neighbors to move the dish, just a little dish stuck on the side of a building that was easy to move and 500 or so channels to choose from.

Cities had a problem with the little dishes because hardly anybody has an unblocked south view. That’s when they came up with “spot beams.” So, the satellites shoot a signal to the spot beam, that shoots a signal to the dish, that shoots a signal to a television. Okay, it’s way more scientific than that, but this is the short version, and you get the picture.

Because the whole satellite system runs on radio signals, the satellite guys found that it saved a lot of space if they encoded the signals digitally and shot all the channels across the same bandwidth. They now have signals available in both standard and HDTV format going out twenty four hours a day.

If you’d like to learn more about how does satellite TV work there are many websites that have all of the scientific information about each part of the system. However, sometimes a short version followed by a satellite broadcast movie is better.

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