Satellite TV Overview
Most people still use a conventional TV set and a set-top satellite receiver to watch satellite TV but it's fast becoming popular to watch satellite TV on your PC. More and more homes today are equipped with at least one PC and most of those pcs are perfectly capable of showing DVDs, streamed video and satellite TV.
Technology is advancing so fast that now one can watch satellite TV or hear radio on a home PC. All you need is special hardware known as PCTV cards that are of two kinds. One kind needs to be installed in the PC while the other kind is an external box that plugs into the PC's USB port.
There are cards that use the PC's infrastructure to decode satellite signals and allow users to enjoy free-to-air digital television and radio programs. There are cards that have built-in processors that allow TV viewing in a separate window while the PC runs other programs. Both kinds of cards can be utilized to receive Broadband Internet via Satellite. Requests are made using a telephone line but data is received at 40MB per second via the satellite dish.
Free to Air (FTA) satellite broadcasts
Free to air satellite TV broadcasts are transmitted for you to enjoy without needing to pay any additional subscription or pay-to-view charges. Unless you live in the UK of course where you have to buy a TV licence no matter what TV broadcasts you receive.
The vast majority of satellite TV to PC solutions available are designed to receive FTA broadcasts, which can mean a lot of channels depending on where in the world you live. If you want to watch premium channels from your satellite TV provider then you will need a decoder to unscramble the signal. More about that in the article Descrambler - Satellite TV.
What is USB and which version do you need?
The short answer to this is "Make sure you get USB 2" on your PC. Most if not all modern PCs support it so you don't need to worry too much.USB 1 or 1.1 was a little slow however and didn't perform well when used for video applications. It will not support high definition TV (HDTV) at all.
USB 2 on the other hand has a maximum speed specification of 480 Mbps, which is about 40 times faster than USB 1.1. USB 2 is well suited to all kinds of video applications that you might want to use.
How to connect your USB FTA satellite receiver to your pc
When you have installed, or had a professional install, your satellite dish and LNB you can connect the cable from the dish to your satellite TV receiver. The next thing to do is to install on your computer any software that came with your USB satellite receiver. Just follow the set-up instructions supplied with the receiver. When you have done that you can connect a USB cable, which is normally supplied with the receiver, into a free USB 2 port on your PC. Run up the software that you installed and away you go.
That's it. It is real simple to watch satellite tv on your computer! Want to find out more about watch satellite tv on your computer? Click Here |
