Dish Network and DirecTV

Dish Network and DirecTV are minidish digital Ku Band satellite programming service providers known as DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) providers. They use MPEG compression to provide many channels that are highly compressed and low quality. The dish is small and fixed since these providers use a very limited number of high power satellites in space. Because the satellites are Ku band and very high power, the receiving dish can be small. Because the programming is compressed down so much, many channels can be offered on a single satellite.

The minidish DBS systems encrypt their broadcasts so that only paying subscribers can view the programming. Dish Network uses a system of encrypting the MPEG broadcast called Nagravision while DirecTV uses the News Data system encryption technology.