if you're old like me you probably remember those big ugly satellite dishes
adorning people's backyards they were big enough for a kid to skateboard in
but even during my Heyday in the 1990s no one I knew who actually had one used
it anymore so what was the point of them whatever happened to them and why were
they so absurdly large in the first place back in the late ' 7s and early '
80s satellite TV was not something that required a paid subscription instead
satellite signals were just out there floating around for anyone with the
right equipment to catch you see these signals were sent out by TV Distributors
and were intended for cable TV companies not regular consumers the cable
companies would receive the signals combine them into a cable TV package and
then sell that package to you and me at
home via wires but because the Assumption was that it would just be
cable companies receiving the TV signals Distributors didn't bother scrambling
them so inevitably Folks at home figured out you could just use a big old dish to
watchh tons of PID TV channels for free
and even folks who weren't trying to get around paying for cable found sight
dishes useful since the only way some people could pick up their free local
channels was via satellite this was especially true in high altitude regions
where the terrain would block typical TV antennas in fact these large satellite
dishes became so common in mountainous West Virginia that a common joke was
that the big ugly dish was actually the state flower I just love that
the reason these dishes had to be so big was that these signals were sent on
something called cband This is a frequency range that's lower than what
modern satellite TV uses and their maximum power was also lower due to a
rule meant to prevent interference the longer wavelengths and lower power meant
you needed a big dish to catch these big waves adding to the inconvenience was
that these dishes had to be pointed more directly at the satellite itself than
modern systems so high-end setups often had a little motor attached to the dish
to rotate the dish when you change channels but this didn't mean that cand
dishes were inferior in every way to the tiny ones we're using now believe it or
not the longer wavelengths meant that they were actually more resistant to bad
weather than current receivers so how did something that got you a bunch of
free content wind up being obsolete we'll tell you right after we thank
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so why are big dishes now basically technological fossils strewn across the
landscape getting stuck in tarpits and such well as as you've probably
predicted the TV industry wasn't too happy about so many people viewing their
content without paying some things never change and starting in 1984 the US
government started allowing broadcasters to scramble their signals this meant
that you now needed to pay for a descrambler in order to legally watch
satellite TV needless to say people were
very upset that they now had to pay subscription fees after already spending
a ton of money on the dishes themselves because of their bulk these big dishes
were expensive the first one cost about
$36,000 back in 1979 and although these
prices dropped quickly to the point that they were going for 1,500 bucks in 1985
that was still a huge investment there was actually this one guy who ran his
own satellite TV business who was so upset that he he was actually able to
overpower HBO's signal and insert his own protest message for a few minutes
back in 1986 what a legend but this
conflict between broadcasters and viewers wouldn't last long as direct
broadcast satellite started getting popularity in the early 1990s that's
when I came around these are the services such as
Direct TV that use the higher frequency KU and Ka bands that can legally be
transmitted with higher power meaning you only need a smaller cheaper dish
naturally the lower equipment cost made them much more popular with consumers
than those massive old school dishes which quickly fell out of favor however
cand is actually still still used for backend TV distribution because of its
advantages in bad weather but as for those old dishes we used to have in our
yards people have repurposed them as everything from long range Wi-Fi
antennas to gazebos to bird baths if
you'll excuse me I need to go hang my
laundry why would I unzip this that would indicate that it's been wet this
whole time stupid so thanks for watching guys
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