DBS - DIRECTV and DISH Network :: essays papers

DBS - DIRECTV and DISH Network Remember when Cable TV came into the picture and began bullying around the network stations for all their lunch money? Well watch out Cable because you might get a little taste of your own Medicine from a powerful extra terrestrial,... satellite that is. A multi-channel alternative to cable television known as Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) is now available in theUnited States of America and boy is it ready to rock. DBS provides picture perfect cable-like television programming directly from satellite dishes approximately 18 inches in diameter. Millions of households now subscribe to DBS services resulting in what appears to have the cable industry wondering what’s going to happen. Cable was introduced in the late 1940’s in the â€Å"boone docks† of Pennsylvania when it’s original name was known as CATV, or Comunity Antenna TV. During this time there were only a few stations and in order to even recieve any picture, a TV set had to be in the vacintaty of antenna where a signal could be recieved. Anyone with a TV who lived to far from the antenna would be crap out of luck. Finally an appliance store owner named John Walson hooked up an antenna to a nearby mountain where he recieved a signal from the cities transitter and wired it down to his store for a good picture. When his clients witnessed that good picture could be brought to their area, John Walson’s TV sales went up drastically. From then on cable started multiplying like horny â€Å"GREMLINS† and â€Å"GOONIES†. In the past cable’s main purpose was to bring network stations to the rural areas. Today cable is capable of carrying hundreds of channels and is the leading source in TV programming with over 60 million subscribers and tons of diverse programming. Before it was all networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX that could be seen on TV. They led the way for a while until cable came along. Today with help from satellites, 24 hour sports(ESPN) and movie(HBO) programming is availible in most cable packages and that was the main reason why cable became so popular. It’s been over 50 years of success for cable, but with the turn of the century coming, what kind of future does cable have with these new media technologies on the rise?