Satellite dish

Taylor Howard of San Andreas, California, adapted an ex-military dish in 1976 and became the first person to receive satellite television signals using it.

The front cover of the 1979 Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog featured the first home satellite TV stations on sale.

[6] In December 1988, Luxembourg's Astra 1A satellite began transmitting analog television signals on the Ku band for the European market.

This feedhorn is essentially the front-end of a waveguide that gathers the signals at or near the focal point and 'conducts' them to a low-noise block downconverter or LNB.

A new form of omnidirectional satellite antenna, which does not use a directed parabolic dish and can be used on a mobile platform such as a vehicle was announced by the University of Waterloo in 2004.

The actual gain depends on many factors including surface finish, accuracy of shape, feedhorn matching.

A common misconception is that the LNBF (low-noise block/feedhorn), the device at the front of the dish, receives the signal directly from the atmosphere.

In the LNB they become down converted to 950–2150 MHz, which is the frequency range allocated for the satellite service on the coaxial cable between LNBF and receiver.

The DC electric power for the LNB is provided through the same coaxial cable conductors that carry the signal to the receiver.

[14][15][16] Professional satellite finder meters allow better dish alignment and provide received signal parameter values as well.

A dish that is mounted on a pole and driven by a stepper motor or a servo can be controlled and rotated to face any satellite position in the sky.

are compatible with at least DiSEqC 1.0, which can switch automatically between 4 satellites (all of contemporary Monoblock LNBs) as the user changes channels using the remote control.

In 2005, dish manufacturers began moving towards new Ka band satellites operating at higher frequencies, offering greater performance at lower cost.

Any metal surface which concentrates a significant fraction of the reflected microwaves at a focus can be used as a dish antenna, at a lower gain.

Only modern low noise LNBs and the higher transmission power of DTH satellites allows a usable signal to be received from such inefficient DIY antennas.