Satellite TV and the equipment used to receive it are quite different from that of terrestrial aerial reception. As the name suggests, the signal is broadcast from a satellite in space to cover a designated area of the planet, known as its footprint. This footprint remains constant as the satellite orbits the earth in a ‘geostationary’ position, which basically means it stays at the same angle and moves at speed equivalent to that of the earths surface.

In order to receive the signal from a satellite a dish is required to collect the signal and reflect it onto an LNB (Low Noise Block). The LNB send the signal down coaxial cable to a satellite receiver which decodes the signal into a format standard TV’s can process. A decoder is required because standard TV’s including digitally integrated TV’s are designed to process terrestrial signals picked up by aerials and not satellite signals picked up by satellite equipment.

The description above relates to the reception of one satellite to one customer. It is possible using specialist satellite equipment to send signals from one or more satellites to several recipients using only one dish.

The key advantage to using satellite TV over aerial transmitters is that vast areas can be covered easily and terrain has little effect on reception. So long as a dish can be pointed towards the Sky, satellite TV can be received.

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