How Does Satellite Television Work?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Bill Barney. I'm with Community Dish in Pahrump, Nevada. I'm an SBCA licensed installer. That's Satellite Broadcast Communications Association and I'd like to help you with your satellite installation. In the simplest form, the satellite does nothing more than redirect signal. It picks it up from a earth bound location in space, then rebroadcasts it and refocuses it to another earth bound location, back down to the earth. In it's simplest form, that's exactly what a satellite does. Basics on how satellite TV works: starts at the network operations center and is broadcast up to the satellite on a fairly high frequency. That frequency is reflected from the satellite and broadcast back to the earth on multiple bands. The Dish Network satellite dish picks up that signal and reduces it down in frequency. It then sends that data, which is still zeros and ones, to the satellite receiver itself. The receiver then de-scrambles the satellite signal and down converts that signal yet again. It converts that signal from the digital signal broadcast analog to the TV sets, and that's how the basic satellite TV system works. HD would be the only exception, and with an HD feed and the proper digital cabling, then the signal is broadcast non-analog to the TV, but digitally, again using zeros and ones to the TV set."