Direct TV HDTV

There are now many companies that offer high definition broadcast signals.  Among these is DirecTV.

DirecTV provides services in direct broadcast satellite.  It transfers satellite television that is digital as well as audio to houses in the United States as well as in the Caribbean, in Latin America save for Mexico.  The service provider is based in El Segundo, California, USA.  The DirecTV Group that is controlled by the News Corporation owns DirecTV.

In order to get its signals, DirecTV utilizes a dish antenna that is 18 inches in diameter and is fixed to the ground.  While already starting to use more of the 18 by 24 inch elliptical antennas that are slightly larger and takes its signals from geostationary satellite positions to give out more programming services, DirecTV has also put up a dish that has five low noise block (LNB) converters for its programming in high definition television or HDTV.

Exactly like those offering the same service as DirecTV, the service provider is also now branching into high definition television or HDTV as well as other services that are interactive.

DirecTV is re-airing HDTV stations that are available in the locality using the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC or Advanced Video Coding codec to manage the growth or increase of intensive bandwidth HDTV broadcasting.  A codec is an instrument or software that compresses or decompresses regular video for digital video. The AVC, on the other hand, is a standard for digital video codec that is known for its compression of data at a very high level.

DirecTV also uses the transmission protocol that is relatively new, which is the DVB-S2 or the modified Digital Video Broadcasting over the satellites SPACEWAY-1 AND SPACEWAY-2, which are part of the service provider's constellation of satellites that gives out direct broadcast.  This enables them to inject more and more high definition programming over its signal through satellite as compared to using the old compression software MPEG-2 and digital satellite service (DSS) protocol that was formerly used.

DirecTV claims that the picture quality of the high definition programming that they are providing is comparable if not better than other television service could provide.  They are now party to a lawsuit which accuses them of lowering the picture resolution of HDTV to that which is below than the accepted HDTV definition in the industry.  It is said that while the 1080i HDTV is normally meant to produce 1920 by 1080i resolutions, DirecTV has bee accused to have lowered these to 1280 by 10881, which is by one third of the normal accepted definition.

For HDTVs to get channels encoded in MPEG-4, they are required to acquire newer models of receivers like the H20 or the 5-LNB Ka/Ku dish.  Britain's Pace Micro Technology plc, France's Thomson and the LG Electronics of Korea have been contracted by DirecTV to make and produce these new tuners or receivers.  While Pace makes the DIRECTV Plus HD DVR, HR20 model and Thomson gives out the Model #H20-100 tuners or receivers, LG Electronics also produces the Model # H20-600.

The HD DVR tuner, model HR10-250, made by TiVo has been phased out by DirecTV as it can only decode signals from the older MPEG-2.  Local stations delivered by DirecTV are now encoded in MPEG-4, which could not be received by the old model of tuner.  They could still take in over-the-air ATSC broadcasts available in the market.  In January 9 this year, the service provider announced the would-be introduction of 100 HD channels nationwide within the year 2007, which are all to be encoded by MPEG-4.

DirecTV provides these high definition channels: 70 – HBO HD, 71 – Showtime HD, 72 -  ESPN2HD, 73 – ESPNHD, 74 – Universal HD, 75 – TNT HD, 76 – Discovery HD Theater, 77 – National Geographic Channel HD, 78 – HDNet Movies, 79 – HDNet, 95 – RSN HD, 96 – RSN HD, 101 – CD USA, 623 – NESN HD and 629 – CSN HD.

By the end of 2007, DirecTV is expected to offer these future HD channels: A&E, Bravo, Cartoon Network, CNN, Food Network, FX, HGTV, MTV, National Geographic,
NFL network, SciFi Channel, Speed, TBS, The History Channel, The Weather Channel and the USA Network.

FSN and Altitude in HD is also broadcast in varied markets by DirecTV for its certain games and on different channels in the 90s range.

Some of the NFL Sunday Ticket package in high definition is also broadcast by DirecTV for an additional fee although this service is only for those customers who purchased the NFL Sunday Ticket Super Fan for a price of $99 that is paid over and above the HD fee.

CBS, FOX, NBC and ABC are local network affiliates of DirecTV that are broadcast in HDTV and could be found in major markets.