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 70s 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 wash tons of paid TV channels for free. And even folks who weren't
trying to get around paying for cable found satellite 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 train 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 C-band. 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 C-band 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 why are big dishes now basically technological fossils strewn across the landscape
getting stuck in tar pits and such? Well, 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 de-scrambler 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 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
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, C-band is actually still used
for back-end 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 birdbaths. 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. If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe,
and hit us up in the comment section for your nostalgia-driven suggestions of topics that
we should cover in the future.