The prospect of digital technology for television signals has been around awhile and is what enables video recorders to be used without video tape. By using digital satellite TV signals, the picture quality is as close to high definition as can be obtained with less than three LNB inputs in your receiver.



The signal being bounced back to Earth by digital satellite TV companies is not able to be received or viewed with most analog systems and offers a better quality picture over the distance it travels. An advantage to digital satellite TV signals is that they can be directed to multiple receivers, enabling you to watch a different program on different receivers, if your satellite is equipped with two or more LNB lines.

Connecting the same output from your receiver to multiple television sets will only able you to watch the same program on all of the sets connected. If you have a recorder connected to your digital satellite TV, digital or videocassette, with one LNB input you can only record the channel you are watching. With a dual LND system you can record one channel while watching different programming on your television set.

Digital Quality Beats Analog Reception

The signal from a digital satellite TV system is less prone to interference from electronic influences such as spurious transmissions on the same frequency and weather patterns. Such was the case with the old UHF and VHF broadcast frequencies. While the signal could travel through certain barriers, the strength of the signal was significantly lost as it traveled greater distances.

With digital satellite TV signals, they are gathered by the satellite dish and transmitted into your receiver inside your house where the signal is unscrambled into its digital format, based on the programming you have subscribed to, which is stored on the acrd inside the unit. As you change your programming options, the card is update to reflect the changes by the company.

The one draw back to digital satellite TV service is that heavy overcast skies can block the signal, just as a tree, building or hill can interfere. However, once the storm clouds have passed the area the signal and television service will return automatically. When there is an outage it is normally for a very brief period of time, sometimes a few minutes, depending on the density of the cloud cover and the speed at which it is passing overhead.