DTH/DBS

By vikas kaduskar Date: 29th sep 2010

DIRECT-TO-HOME (DTH) / DIRECT BROADCAST SATELLITE (DBS)

(Direct Broadcast Satellite) A one-way TV broadcast service from a communications satellite to a small round or oval dish antenna no larger than 20" in diameter. Using a highly compressed digital signal in the 11-15GHz Kuband, DBS offers every household in the country a service similar to cable TV. Prior to DBS, costly equipment and very large dishes were required, and tuning stations was complicated because content was available on multiple satellites.

 Direct broadcast satellite (DBS) is a term used to refer to satellite television broadcasts intended for home reception, also referred to as direct-to-home signals. It covers both analog and digital television and radio reception, and is often extended to other services provided by modern digital television systems, including video-on-demand and interactive features. A "DBS service" usually refers to either a commercial service, or a group of free channels available from one orbital position targeting one country.

Terminology confusion
In certain regions of the world, especially in North America, DBS is used to refer to providers of subscription satellite packages, and has become applied to the entire equipment chain involved. With modern satellite providers in the United States using high power Ku-band transmissions using circular polarization, which result in small dishes, and digital compression (hence bringing in an alternative term, Digital Satellite System, itself likely connected to the proprietary encoding system used by DirecTV, Digital Satellite Service), DBS is often misused to refer to these. DBS systems are often driven by pay television providers, which drives further confusion. Additionally, in some areas it is used to refer to specific segments of the Ku-band, normally 12.2 to 12.7 GHz, as this bandwidth is often referred to as DBS or one of its synonyms. In comparison, European "Ku band" DBS systems can drop as low as 10.7 GHz, which is in fact in the X band.

Free DBS services

Germany is likely the leader in free-to-air DBS, with approximately 40 analogue and 100 digital channels broadcast from the SES Astra 1 position at 19.2E. These are not marketed as a DBS service, but are received in approximately 12 million homes, as well as in any home using the German commercial DBS system, Premiere. The United Kingdom has approximately 90 free-to-air digital channels, for which a promotional and marketing plan is being devised by the BBC and ITV, to be sold as "Freesat". It is intended to provide a multi-channel service for areas which cannot receive Freeview, and eventually replace their network of UHF repeaters in these areas India's national broadcaster, Doordarshan, promotes a free-to-air DBS package as "DD Direct Plus", which is provided as in-fill for the country's terrestrial transmission network

The Broadcast TV Problem

Conceptually, satellite television is a lot like broadcast television. It's a wireless system for delivering television programming directly to a viewer's house. Both broadcast television and satellite stations transmit programming via a radio signal (see How Radio Works for information about radio broadcasting). Broadcast stations use a powerful antenna to transmit radio waves to the surrounding area. Viewers can pick up the signal with a much smaller antenna. The main limitation of broadcast television is range. The radio signals used to broadcast television shoot out from the broadcast antenna in a straight line. In order to receive these signals, you have to be in the direct "line of sight" of the antenna. Small obstacles like trees or small buildings aren't a problem; but a big obstacle, such as the Earth, will reflect these radio waves.

 If the Earth were perfectly flat, you could pick up broadcast television thousands of miles from the source. But because the planet is curved, it eventually breaks the signal's line of site. The other problem with broadcast television is that the signal is often distorted even in the viewing area. To get a perfectly clear signal like you find on cable, you have to be pretty close to the broadcast antenna without too many obstacles in the way.

Photo courtesy DirecTV

The Satellite TV Solution

Satellite television solves the problems of range and distortion by transmitting broadcast signals from satellites orbiting the Earth. Since satellites are high in the sky, there are a lot more customers in the line of site. Satellite television systems transmit and receive radio signals using specialized antennas called satellite dishes.

Satellites are higher in the sky than TV antennas, so they have a much larger "line of sight" range.

 The television satellites are all in geosynchronous orbit, meaning that they stay in one place in the sky relative to the Earth. Each satellite is launched into space at about 7,000 mph (11,000 kph), reaching approximately 22,200 miles (35,700 km) above the Earth. At this speed and altitude, the satellite will revolve around the planet once every 24 hours -the same period of time it takes the Earth to make one full rotation. In other words, the satellite keeps pace with our moving planet exactly. This way, you only have to direct the dish at the satellite once, and from then on it picks up the signal without adjustment, at least when everything works right. (See How Satellites Work for more information on satellite orbits.)

 Unlike earlier programming, the provider's broadcast is completely digital, which means it has much better picture and sound quality (see How Digital Television Works for details). Early satellite television was broadcast in C-band radio -- radio in the 3.4-gigahertz (GHz) to 7GHz frequency range. Digital broadcast satellite transmits programming in the Ku frequency range (12 GHz to 14 GHz ).

The Components
There are five major components involved in a direct to home (DTH) satellite system: the programming source, the broadcast center, the satellite, the satellite dish and the receiver.
Programming sources are simply the channels that provide programming for broadcast. The provider doesn't create original programming itself; it pays other companies (HBO, for example, or ESPN) for the right to broadcast their content via satellite. In this way, the provider is kind of like a broker between you and the actual programming sources. (Cable television companies work on the same principle.) The broadcast center is the central hub of the system. At the broadcast center, the television provider receives signals from various programming sources and beams a broadcast signal to satellites in geostationary orbit. The satellites receive the signals from the broadcast station and rebroadcast them to the ground. The viewer's dish picks up the signal from the satellite (or multiple satellites in the same part of the sky) and passes it on to the receiver in the viewer's house. The receiver processes the signal and passes it on to a standard television.

 A satellite dish is just a special kind of antenna designed to focus on a specific broadcast source. The standard dish consists of a parabolic (bowlshaped) surface and a central feed horn. To transmit a signal, a controller sends it through the horn, and the dish focuses the signal into a relatively narrow beam. The dish on the receiving end can't transmit information; it can only receive it. The receiving dish works in the exact opposite way of the transmitter. When a beam hits the curved dish, the parabola shape reflects the radio signal inward onto a particular point, just like a concave mirror focuses light onto a particular point.

 The central element in the feed horn is the low noise blockdown converter, or LNB. The LNB amplifies the radio signal bouncing off the dish and filters out the noise (radio signals not carrying programming). The LNB passes the amplified, filtered signal to the satellite receiver inside the viewer's house.

CONDITIONAL ACCESS SYSTEM

A conditional access system (CAS) is a system by which electronic transmission of digital media, especially satellite television signals through cable, is limited to subscribed clients. This is called conditional access. The signal is encrypted and is unavailable for unauthorised reception. A set-top box containing a conditional access module is required in the customer premises to receive and decrypt the signal. CAS is now becoming a significant concern for major companies in the DVB-H market because broadcasters are looking to control the digital signals that they will be broadcasting.

 Conditional access ("CA") is the protection of content by requiring certain criteria to be met before granting access to this content. The term is commonly used in relation to digital television systems, most notably satellite television. Under the DVB, conditional access system standards are defined in the specification documents for DVB-CA (Conditional Access), DVB-CSA (the Common Scrambling Algorithm) and DVB-CI (the Common Interface). These standards define a method by which a digital television stream can be obfuscated, with access provided only to those with valid decryption smart cards.

 This is achieved by a combination of scrambling and encryption. Encryption is the process of protecting the secret keys that are transmitted with a scrambled stream in order to enable the descrambler to work at the receiving end. The scrambler key, called the control word, must, of course, be sent to the receiver, and is encrypted as an entitlement control message (ECM). The CA subsystem in the receiver will decrypt the control word only when authorised to do so; that authority is sent to the receiver in the form of an entitlement management message (EMM). The control word is typically changed at intervals of 10 seconds. The ECM is changed at perhaps monthly intervals to discourage unauthorised viewing; this being apparently not sufficient, TPS has lowered this interval down to about 12 minutes. The decryption cards are read, and sometimes updated with specific access rights, through a Conditional Access Module (CAM), a PCMCIA format card reader, or a built-in card reader meeting DVB-CI standards, such as that in the Sky Digibox.

WHAT IS CAS?
CAS stands for conditional access system, which is a digital mode of transmitting TV channels trough a set-top box (STB). The transmission signals are encrypted and viewers need to buy a set-top box to receive and decrypt the signal. The STB is required to watch only pay channels, not free-to-air channels, like Doordarshan.

 The set-top box is the device that enables a subscriber view pay channels. This instrument decodes signals from the cable operator for viewing a pay channel. It can also monitor the number and duration of channels viewed by the subscriber. Analog STBs cost between Rs 3,000-3,500, while digital STBs cost 5,500 to 7,000. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (which also regulates India's cable television regime) has asked cable TV service providers in CAS areas to offer digital set-top boxes on a monthly rental scheme of Rs 30 and a refundable security deposit of Rs 999. Subscribers will also have another option of not paying any security deposit but the monthly rental will be higher at Rs 45 per STB. For analogue boxes, the rent will be Rs 23 per month per STB. Multisystem operators, like Hathway, now plan to give out STBs to their subscribers at a nominal rental of Rs 1 per day. If you change your address, you may have to go in for a new MSO who covers your new location.

What is a set-top box? How much does it cost?

 For viewers: Under, CAS viewers can watch only what they would like to watch, than what the cable operator has on offer. Subscribers save money they now spend on unnecessary channels. They will get better transmission (because of the use of optic fibre instead of metal cables). The cable operators will no longer have any control over the pricing of channels. For broadcasters: It benefits broadcasters as they always had to grapple with the issue of cable operators not declaring the actual number of subscribers, and hence suffering losses. With CAS, they can find out the exact number of subscribers with a cable operator. For cable TV operators: They need to pay a part of the subscription fees to the broadcasters only for the actual number of end users who opt for the channel. This allows operators to price their channels according to their popularity. For advertisers: It gives a far more accurate indicator of programme popularity with only the actual subscribers of each channel being accounted for.

Advantages of CAS