Differences Between Satellite And Cable Propagation
Satellite and cable television services are the dominant subscription television choices today. Both of them market themselves as providing access to a great many channels—which is true—and for having subscription offerings designed to allow flexible budgeting of one's entertainment dollar. As satellite has been available over the last couple of decades, it has outperformed cable in attracting new customers. This largely has to do with the way satellite broadcasts are made and the technology behind them.
Cable's infrastructure, while innovative for the time in which it was developed, is partially the reason its market growth is naturally limited. Cable television was developed as a means for many people to use the same large antenna to receive their broadcasts. When it was first launched, it served as a means for people to receive broadcast television from distant places. The large antenna provided the reception and many different households were attached to that antenna via cabling. It is for that reason that cable television is often referred to as CATV—an acronym for Community Access TV. Cable television works in much the same fashion today, with a central station receiving satellite transmissions and distributing them to subscriber households.
Cable television is limited by the reach of its wiring. Most often, this means that customers are only eligible for the service in towns where there is a cable provider operating or nearby a town which has a provider. As people have moved farther away from the central parts of cities, this has required cable to grow its infrastructure but it remains almost exclusively available in areas where there is a significant density of population. For the growing number of families that have chosen to move away from cities, this has left the only option for subscription television being satellite.
Satellite television is rather the opposite distribution model of cable television and, in some ways, has more in common with over-the-air broadcasting. Signals are broadcast from a satellite which orbits approximately 30,000 miles above the planet over the equator. Subscribers are provided with their own satellite dish which serves as the antenna. This allows subscribers almost anywhere on the planet to receive service as the central broadcast is emanating from a point visible from almost any location. Satellite dishes are pointed toward the southern sky in the northern hemisphere due to the point of origin of the broadcast.
As satellite became more competitive, the dishes started appearing in areas where cable television was already available. In this case, the method of propagating the signal makes little difference as both services are available though the lack of dependency upon a centralized physical distribution grid tends to allow satellite to broadcast with more reliability than cable. Both services have branched out, as well, offering Internet access and other features over their broadcasting networks. As satellite has begun to outpace cable, the old infrastructure of community access television, or lack of access to it, has become less of a concern.
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