Satellite TV has been around since the early sixties. It is a way that you can watch television from receiving signals from a satellite in space. Satellites have been a source of communication for many years. Whether or not the government envisioned providing millions of homes with television reception when they first launched the satellite program is not known.

Television for many years was broadcast by radio waves. And of course before that we had radio. And before radio people got news and even entertainment via Morse code on the telegraph.

And before the radio people kept up with the news through the telegraph system which uses the Morse code to communicate. But now we have satellite in space to beam back images to our television sets. The difference between satellite and cable TV or regular TV for that matter is that it provides a clearer more enhanced picture and audio reception.

This is because of the digital reception of the satellite image and audio. You can easily see this when you compare cable with audio. It is interesting to watch shows on satellite that you are used to watching on regular or cable TV. You can actually see blemishes on some of the stars of your favorite shows. You can see the glare off the tops of heads on TV who have no hair.

The main component that satellite television customers have is the direct home version. This is a set up with a satellite TV provider similar to a cable television provider. The broadcasters of programing make their feeds available to the provider by sending their broadcast up to the satellite and then the provider receives that feed in their series of satellite dishes and then sends that out to all its customers. This like a broker.

Customers need a satellite dish on their home to capture the feed from their provider. This means the satellite television provider does not broadcast the programs itself. It merely contracts with the broadcasters of the program feeds. The provider then acts a type of broker. The dish acts as a receiver. The ones that are installed on the homes of those who are satellite TV customers can only act as receivers.

You will still have to have a receiver on your TV to unscramble the feed from the satellite to your satellite dish. The receiver decodes the feed and then presents it on your screen. When many people think of this system they think of unlimited television reception. However this is not necessarily the case.

Some might think this is the case when compared to their cable television choices. But the reality is that there are many many governmental controls in the satellite TV business. New legislation is always being passed limiting or controlling to some extent the broadcast of far away feeds. The competition is controlled to a great extent by many government mandates. The industry limits access to certain feeds for the sake of promoting other feeds which pay more money to them to make them available to their customers. It is in large part an issue of money. So there is some freedom in the satellite television market but there are many restraints also.