Direct Broadcast satellite (DBS) delivers hundreds of TV channels to millions of people around the world. Satellite owners buy slots in space and lease assigned transponder frequencies to service providers. In this paper, I briefly introduce the history and development of DBS, the major vendors of the products, and overall market situation. In order to illustrate why DBS is such a popular technology, I also give out the comparison between DBS and the traditional cable TV. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages. But the competitive advantages of DBS will make it attract more subscribers thus gain larger market share in the future.
             Most network and cable programs are transmitted on a series of C-band satellites and some Ku-band satellites. These two types of satellites use different frequencies much as VHF and UHF broadcast TV use different frequencies.
             Communications satellites were originally designed for commercial purposes for sending telephone, radio, TV, and other signals across the country and around the world for retransmission to businesses and homes by local telephone companies, TV stations, or cable companies. Enterprising individuals soon learned to build satellite dish receivers to pick up these signals at their own home, and begin making and selling these systems to homeowners around the country, thus beginning the era of home satellite TV. During the 1980's and early 1990's, several million of these C-band systems were sold with dishes generally around the 10' diameter size. One of the early pioneers in the C-band business was Charlie Ergan who founded Echosphere Corporation.
             As home satellite systems became more popular, programmers such as HBO and others realized that they could not continue to give away their programs free to millions of home dish owners. A scrambling system was then developed so their signals were no longer broadcast "in the clear" for everyone with a dish to pick up without any paym...