Satellite TV Introduction

Satellite TV has been around for years, as an avenue to watch 24hrs television with diverse programming, and also to listen to crystal clear radio with various content. For years, satellite TV in Africa meant DSTV, that very expensive, but unbelievably entertaining outfit from south Africa. But because most people couldn’t afford their setup, let alone the monthly subscription, people began looking at alternatives, that was what drove the need for F.T.A T.V, which stands for ‘Free-to-Air television’ (though some people might argue that it should be called F.T.V i.e. ‘free to view’, but that’s another discussion). F.T.A has also been around for years, I don’t know enough of the history so I won’t go into it, but the most important thing to note historically is that for years, whenever people talk about F.T.A, it almost invariably meant Arabsat, (well in Nigeria at least). While it was adequate for some purposes, it was very limited, one very annoying problems about arabsat was that it was analog so the pictures were pretty poor and sometimes some channels would cross into each other, and most of the channels were in Arabic, with very little entertainment value for us over here. It became known unofficially as the poor people’s DSTV.
These days however, when one talks of F.T.A, to someone who knows about it, it means a world of unbelievable and almost unlimited opportunities. The advent of what is termed D.V.B (digital video broadcasting) helped spur satellite TV to new heights and F.T.A also tagged along for the ride. While making the content on most satellite tv to be of crystal clear quality and unbelievable diversity, it also makes it possible to broadcast several streams on one ‘feed’, so that one provider can pay for just one frequency on a satellite and then broadcast and several ‘channels’ containing diverse programming, movies, music, news, documentaries, e.t.c., and that is just one frequency, u can have up to 40 frequencies from one particular satellite. However, most of these broadcasts are actually pay-tv, but there are always a few channels which are not encrypted so that one can get these at no cost.
So while a lot of people are into F.T.A because of the cost (or lack of it) a lot more, who may have the money are in it just for the fun of it because apart from tv and radio, DVB also helps broadcast streams for internet traffic and a lot of people are taking advantage of this, but that is gist for another day.