Before It Gets There
The satellite receiver, which sits in your home and connects to your TV to bring you the satellite image, is the last step on a very long trip for the satellite signal. It starts with the arrays at the satellite company itself, which beam an encoded signal up to the satellite. The satellite them beams the signal back down to the dish on top of your house. That process keeps the signal clean because there are no land-bound obstacles to interfere with it. The dish reflects the signal to the LNB array on the end of the extruding arm. LNB stands for "low noise block;" it both amplifies the signal and filters it into frequencies which your receiver can read. From there, it goes to the receiver itself, to begin the final stage of the process.
The Receiver's Job
The receiver's primary job is to interpret the satellite signal into a form you can view and control. The decoder chip inside of it decrypts the signal. The encryption s in place to prevent those who haven't paid for the service from accessing the signal. Then the receiver decompresses it: most satellite companies use MPEG signals, which are compressed and need to be "opened up" before your television can view them. After decompression, it converts the singal into a readable form; in the U.S., this usually means NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) format, though it can also entail digital and high definition formats as well. The particulars depend on your satellite dish. Finally, it splits the signal into different channels which the receiver lets you access by tuning to the part of the signal containing the channel you want. Whenever you change channels on the receiver, you're simply accessing another part of the signal.
Additional Duties
While interpreting the signal is the receiver's primary job, it also has a host of other features. It periodically makes calls to your satellite company, letting them know whether you've purchased anything on pay-per-view and similar details while receiving software upgrades when necessary. It also accesses a signal containing programming information, which lets you view the broadcast schedule directly on your screen. Many of them also contain DVRs (digital video recorders): hard drives which record programs as digital information and let you play them back when you're ready to watch them. DVRs let you pause and rewind live broadcasts as well, creating your own instant replays.
Tags: part signal, receiver primary, satellite company, satellite signal, signal containing, signal into, your satellite
