DIRECTV first launched its service in the summer of 1994. According to industry statistics, the DIRECTV® System became one of the fastest selling consumer electronics product ever to enter the market — faster than color TVs, CD players and VCRs.
The DIRECTV System includes a small satellite dish (which is an antenna for receiving a satellite broadcast signal); a digital integrated receiver/decoder (IRD), which separates each channel, and decompresses and translates the digital signal so a television can show it; and a remote control.
DIRECTV® programming is distributed by six high-power satellites: four built by Hughes Electronics Corp. (DBS-1, DBS-2, DIRECTV 1-R, and D4-S), and two built by LORAL (DIRECTV 5, 6). Each satellite has multiple transponders that relay the DIRECTV signal from the broadcast centers to home satellite dishes. The D4-S satellite is a "spot beam" satellite which allows signals to target specific areas within the U.S., and is used by DIRECTV to deliver local programming. The "spot beam" satellite has five antennas and multiple feeds. Each feed projects its particular signal onto a special location on one of the antennas. The antenna is specifically shaped to bounce the signal to a specific location in the continental U.S.
All DIRECTV satellites are located in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the earth. DIRECTV provides service from three orbital locations under authority granted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). After the DIRECTV System is installed — a process that includes aiming the dish at the satellites — no adjustment is necessary to change programming because the satellites remain in the same location in the sky. The dish never has to track the satellites, so there's no waiting for the picture to come in and little maintenance required.
To gather programming content, ensure its digital quality, and transmit the signal up to the satellites, DIRECTV created two of the most sophisticated digital broadcast centers in the world — in Castle Rock, Colorado, and Los Angeles, California. Programming comes to the broadcast center from our content providers (CNN, ESPN, etc.) via satellite, fiber optic cable and/or special digital tape. Most satellite-delivered programming is immediately digitized, encrypted and uplinked to the orbiting satellites. Some programs are copied to professional video servers by the broadcast centers' state-of-the-art automation equipment to be broadcast later.
The satellites retransmit the signal back down to each customer's DIRECTV satellite dish. Before any recorded programs are viewed by customers, technicians use sophisticated post-production equipment to view and analyze each tape to ensure audio and video quality. Professional video layout servers have playback of a program triggered by a computerized signal sent from the broadcast automation system. Back-up video playout servers ensure uninterrupted transmission at all times.
If you're familiar with multimedia computers, you may have heard of MPEG, which stands for Moving Pictures Experts Group. MPEG is a technology that can compress a moving image so it takes a tiny fraction of the space it normally would for transmission. Uncompressed digital images can be enormous; about ten or twenty seconds would fill up the hard drive on a home computer. Even compressed, digital moving images are very large.
Consider this comparison: Your telephone modem can transmit information at up to 56 thousand bits per second. At DIRECTV, each of our transponders on the DIRECTV 1-R and DBS-2 satellites can send about 30 million bits of information per second to a DIRECTV System, or more than 500 times what a normal PC modem can handle. This data transmission rate enables DIRECTV to retransmit detailed moving digital video signals to subscribers. DIRECTV programming and all DIRECTV Receivers employ MPEG-2 technology, the emerging world standard for digital broadcasts.
