Decoding Satellite Tv Signals

Broadly speaking, satellite TV transmissions are encoded to ensure the income of transpon- der leaseholders. Ideally, the decoding of the relevant chan- nel is so intricate as to require the use of a special decoder unit, which cable authorities, and sometimes individual viewers, purchase or lease from the satellite broadcaster"s viewers registration depart- ment. In this way, these (com- mercially operating) broad- casting stations can keep an ac- count of the number of viewers of their satellite service, and are thus in a position to raise a fee for authorized reception of the programme. In the case of Sky Channel, the first all-commercial European satellite TV service to come into existence, the underlying reasons for encoding their popular programme were in principle not aimed at regu- lating the programme pen- etration. Since the Eutelsat 1-Fl (ECS-1, OP 13¬? E) was-and still is-a communication service satellite, international regu- lations initially prohibited the transm...