How Do TV Satellites Work?

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is 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 its simplest form a satellite does nothing more than redirect signal. It picks it up from an Earthbound location in space then rebroadcasts it and refocuses it to another Earthbound location back down to the Earth. In its simplest form that's exactly what a satellite does. Dish Network and DirecTV another type of video type satellites are geosynchronous in their location. That is key. What that means is that the satellite movement is as exactly at the same movement of the Earth. That keeps the orbit in the same spot in the sky. This is what makes the smaller dishes in part operable to work without geosynchronous orbit the dish would have to move in order to track the satellite in the sky. The other thing that makes these small dishes work as opposed to the larger older dishes is the power at which they transmit from. With the new technology and the new ability to take sun power and convert it into usable electrical power, 22,400 miles up in space that gives us the ability to have a smaller reflector plate and that makes for a lot smaller satellite dish and a lot less expensive equipment at the property and location of the home."