Television receive-only (TVRO) is a term used chiefly in North America, South America to refer to the reception of satellite television from FSS-type satellites, generally on C-band analog; free-to-air and unconnected to a commercial DBS provider. TVRO was the main means of consumer satellite reception in the United States and Canada until the mid-1990s with the arrival of direct-broadcast satellite television services such as PrimeStar, USSB, Bell Satellite TV, DirecTV, Dish Network, Sky TV that transmit Ku signals. While these services are at least theoretically based on open standards, the majority of services are encrypted and require proprietary decoder hardware. TVRO systems relied on feeds being transmitted unencrypted and using open standards, which heavily contrasts to DBS systems in the region.
A satellite dish is a dish-shaped type of parabolic antenna designed to receive or transmit information by radio waves to or from a communication satellite. The term most commonly means a dish which receives direct-broadcast satellite television from a direct broadcast satellite in geostationary orbit.
4DTV is a proprietary broadcasting standard and technology for digital cable broadcasting and C-band/Ku-band satellite dishes from Motorola, using General Instrument's DigiCipher II for encryption. It can tune in both analog VideoCipher II and digital DCII satellite channels.
Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription, other ongoing cost, or one-off fee. In the traditional sense, this is carried on terrestrial radio signals and received with an antenna.
Bell Satellite TV is the division of BCE Inc. that provides satellite television service across Canada. It launched on September 10, 1997. As of April 2017, Bell Satellite TV provides over 700 channels to over 1 million subscribers. Its major competitors include satellite service Shaw Direct, as well as various cable and communications companies across Canada.
Free-to-view (FTV) is a term used for audiovisual transmissions that are provided free without any form of continual subscription. It differs from free-to-air (FTA) in that the program is encrypted.
VideoCipher is a brand name of analog scrambling and de-scrambling equipment for cable and satellite television invented primarily to enforce Television receive-only (TVRO) satellite equipment to only receive TV programming on a subscription basis.
Loma Linda Broadcasting Network (LLBN) is a non-profit, community and variety television, Christian broadcasting network in Loma Linda, California founded in 1996. Broadcast can be received via GloryStar Satellite Systems - Galaxy 19, Internet video streaming on each website, IPTV services such as Roku and Roku devices, Joozoor TV and many more, and Verizon FiOS and cable/low and high power TV stations in select areas. LLBN English broadcasts on Glorystar channel 105, along with LLBN Arabic on Glorystar channel 405 and LLBN Latino on Glorystar channel 505. It is located in Loma Linda which is known as one of only five blue zones worldwide from the surrounding Seventh-day Adventist community from which it draws for its programs, with values and lifestyle centered on the Seventh-day Adventist Church and from the Loma Linda University and Hospital nearby.
Smile is a Christian free-to-air television network owned and operated by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. The network is aimed at children aged 2-12 and offers a mixture of children's religious and family-oriented programming. The network was founded as the television branch of TBN's Smile of a Child ministry, created by TBN co-founder Jan Crouch.
AlphaStar Digital Television was a direct-to-home satellite broadcasting service for the United States market developed by Canadian firm Tee-Comm Electronics. It was the first direct-to-home satellite broadcasting service in the United States to use the internationally accepted DVB-S broadcasting standard and used 39" satellite dish receivers. Its service launched in July 1996, but was discontinued completely by September 1997 with 40,000 subscribers as the company went through bankruptcy proceedings. The American assets of AlphaStar was used under the auspices of the Champion Telecom Platform which used to own the AlphaStar brand. AlphaStar would also have alleviated a shortage of Canadian satellite capacity by using foreign (US) satellite capacity to fill Canadian needs—indeed this was a requirement for the Canadian company to obtain its license from Canada to commence broadcasting. Tee-Comm, the parent company of AlphaStar had originally co-founded the partnership that created ExpressVu as technology supplier but later divested all interest in ExpressVu.
Low-noise block downconverters (LNBs) are electronic devices coupled to satellite dishes for TV reception or general telecommunication that convert electromagnetic waves into digital signals that can be used to transform information into human or machine interpretable data, e.g., optical images, video, code, communications, etc.
Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commonly referred to as a satellite dish and a low-noise block downconverter.
A digital television adapter (DTA), commonly known as a converter box or decoder box, is a television tuner that receives a digital television (DTV) transmission, and converts the digital signal into an analog signal that can be received and displayed on an analog television set. Some also have an HDMI output since some TVs with HDMI do not have a digital tuner. The input digital signal may be over-the-air terrestrial television signals received by a television antenna, or signals from a digital cable system. It normally does not refer to satellite TV, which has always required a set-top box either to operate the big satellite dish, or to be the integrated receiver/decoder (IRD) in the case of direct-broadcast satellites (DBS).
A free-to-air or FTA Receiver is a satellite television receiver designed to receive unencrypted broadcasts. Modern decoders are typically compliant with the MPEG-2/DVB-S and more recently the MPEG-4/DVB-S2 standard for digital television, while older FTA receivers relied on analog satellite transmissions which have declined rapidly in recent years.
Currently, there are two primary satellite television providers of subscription based service available to United States consumers: DirecTV and Dish Network, which have 21 and 10 million subscribers respectively.
Saorsat is a free-to-air satellite service in Ireland. The service launched on 3 May 2012. It was designed to provide TV service to a final 1-2% of the Irish population unable to receive other signals.
Galaxy 25 (G-25) launched in 1997, contracted by International Launch Services (ILS), formerly known as Intelsat Americas 5 (IA-5) until 15 February 2007 when it was renamed as result of the merger between owner Intelsat and PanAmSat for Telstar 5, is a medium-powered communications satellite formerly in a geostationary orbit at 97° West, above a point in the Pacific Ocean several hundred miles west of the Galapagos Islands. It was manufactured by Space Systems/Loral using its LS-1300 satellite bus and is currently owned and operated by Intelsat. The satellite's main C-band transponder cluster covers the United States, Canada, and Mexico; its main Ku-band transponder cluster covers the United States, Mexico, and the Northern Caribbean Sea. An additional C-band and a Ku-band transponder pair targets Hawaii.
GlobeCast World TV was a television via satellite service received in North America via the Galaxy 19 satellite, providing ethnic television and audio channels. It was a service by Globecast, a subsidiary of Orange. In North America, the satellite broadcasts dozens of Arabic and Asian channels.
The Truth Channel, originally The Old Path (TOP) Channel, is a religious broadcast station of the Members Church of God International (MCGI), an international Christian organization with headquarters in the Philippines. Formerly called as TOP Channel, The Truth Channel carries the 24/7 English broadcast of Ang Dating Daan, the longest-running religious program in the Philippines, hosted by international televangelist and MCGI's Overall Servant Bro. Eli Soriano for English-speaking countries in North America, Middle East, Europe and Asia. The MCGI leadership decided to air The Old Path program using several satellites to increase its reach and expand the propagation efforts of the church on a global scale.
Eutelsat 5 West A, formerly Atlantic Bird 3 was a communications satellite belonging to the operator Eutelsat. Situated at 5° West, it broadcast satellite television, radio and other digital data. Developed for France Telecom it was transferred soon after its launch to the operator Eutelsat. It entered operational service in early September 2002. Its anticipated working life was 15 years. It was decommissioned in January 2023.
