DirecTV
DirecTV has rapidly become one of the leaders in satellite broadcasting. The company is based in Southern California and provides services throughout the United States and parts of Latin America. It works the same way that many satellite services work: a parabolic dish is set up on the roof of the customer's home, which receives signals that the converter box on your television translates into stations.
Why Satellites?
Satellites eliminate a number of interference problems, most notably the issue caused by the curve of the Earth. Since television signals are broadcast in a straight line, the curve causes difficulties for those a considerable distance away. Satellites like the kind used by DirecTV solve the problem nicely: the signal travels straight up to the satellite, then straight back down to the dish in your home, eliminating the interference.
Geosynchronous Orbit
Older satellite dishes used to have to pivot and shift in order to pick up the signals from the satellite properly. DirecTV and other companies solved that problem with the perfection of geosynchronous orbit for its satellites. That means the satellites remain at a fixed point relative to the Earth--orbiting at the precise speed as the Earth rotates--which keeps the dishes themselves from having to pivot. They just need to be pointed at the right part of the sky. (If you walk around your neighborhood, you might notice that most or all of the satellite dishes are turned in the exact same direction.) That keeps costs down and makes DirecTV services much more affordable.
LNBs
DirecTV uses a trio of satellites to beam its signals down to customers. Those signals are then trapped in the dish and reflected to a trio of LNBs along its feedhorn. LNB stands for "low noise block." They enhance the signal from the satellite--filtering out any interferences--and expand it into a large band of frequencies for your satellite box to decode and broadcast. Standard DirecTV dishes used to have just one LNB, but many now have three--capable of handling more programming options--and dishes with five LNBs are currently in production as well.
Programming
DirecTV gets its programming by paying a fee to the various stations that produce it. That fee then becomes part of the money it charges every month for its services . Accordingly, it can sell different channels to different customers, charging more or less depending on the quantity of stations and the presence of premium channels such as HBO. DirecTV has six programming packages based on the cost to acquire each station's content and beam it into your home.
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