Sky Digital - How it All Began

History

Sky digital as it is known today was formed in 1990 as a result of a merger between Rupert Murdoch owner of Sky television and the British Satellite Broadcasting Company. This was in effect a takeover of the British Satellite Broadcasting Company by Sky television. This led to the scrapping of the most of the British Satellite Broadcasting channels and the sale of British Satellite Broadcasting head office, Marco Polo house. In addition the Marco Polo series satellites were run down and sold off between 1992 and 1993 in favour of the Astra System.

However the merger between the two companies provided urgently needed advertising revenue for sky. This was due to the a that sky had very few major advertisers despite its popularity.

The Astra Network

In 1989 the first satellite of the Astra satellite network launched Astra 1A offering an analogue service to the UK and Ireland. This was closely followed in 1991 with the launch of more Astra satellites which were orbitally co-located so that they could be received by using the same satellite dish.

In 1997 Astra launched the series two satellite in new orbital position of 28.2 E closely followed by more Astra satellites as well Eutelsat and Eurobird1 at 28.5 E giving them the capacity to host sky digital. Built by Boeing the new fleet of Astra two satellites maintains a geostationary orbit at 35,600 kilometres from the earth.

During the following years Sky increased its channel package from the original Sky One, Sky News and Sky Movies to include Sky Sports, Sky Sports 2 and the History Channel, the Disney Channel and finally introduced Sky + in 2001.

In 2005 Sky and launched Sky broadband which was available to existing Sky Movies and Sky Sports subscribers this then allowed them to download movies and sports clips director home computer free of charge.

Looking Into The Future

There have been rumours started by the Economist which suggests that BSkyB would like to merge with the Direct TV and possibly start a new satellite service call Star TV which would form a global satellite TV Company. However BSkyB has recently sold its share in Direct TV quashing any rumour of a merger with Direct TV. Sky is also rumoured to be interested in National Football League to the Sky line up.

Sky Television have put forward plans to release a digital terrestrial television service called Sky Picnic. However following investigations by Ofcom on the 13th of May, 2008 Sky televisions plans have been put on hold until at least 2009. A spokesman from Sky advised that the project has currently being put on hold.

Article written by Bill Links satellite system expert at http://www.caravan-satellite-system.co.uk

Article produced by http://www.smoothlinking.com

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