Digital Satellite System is the initialism expansion of the DSS digital

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...

transmission system used by

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. It ...

. Only when digital transmission was introduced did

direct broadcast satellite Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...

(DBS) television become popular in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

, which has led to both DBS and DSS being used interchangeably to refer to all three commonplace digital transmission formats - DSS, DVB-S and 4DTV. Analog DBS services, however, existed prior to DirecTV and were still operational in continental Europe until April 2012. At the time of DirecTV's launch in 1994, the DVB-S digital satellite system in use in the majority of the world had not yet been standardised, the

Thomson Thomson may refer to: Names * Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin * Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson Businesses and organizations * SGS-Thomson Mic ...

developed DSS system was used instead. While functionally similar in DVB-S –

MPEG 2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, ...

video,

MPEG-1 Layer II MPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II (MP2, sometimes incorrectly called Musicam or MUSICAM) is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3). While MP3 is m ...

or AC3 audio,

QPSK Phase-shift keying (PSK) is a digital modulation process which conveys data by changing (modulating) the phase of a constant frequency reference signal (the carrier wave). The modulation is accomplished by varying the sine and cosine inputs at a ...

modulation, and identical error correction ( Reed–Solomon coding and Viterbi

forward error correction In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...

), the transport stream and information tables are entirely different from those of DVB. Also unlike DVB, all DSS receivers are proprietary DirecTV reception units. DirecTV is now using a modified version of

DVB-S2 Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) is a digital television broadcast standard that has been designed as a successor for the popular DVB-S system. It was developed in 2003 by the Digital Video Broadcasting Proje ...

, the latest version of the DVB-S protocol, for

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

services off the SPACEWAY-1,

SPACEWAY-2 Spaceway-2 is part of DirecTV's constellation of direct broadcast satellites. The satellite was launched via an Arianespace Ariane 5 ECA rocket from Kourou, French Guiana on 16 November 2005. Its operational position is in geosynchronous orbit ...

DirecTV-10 T10 (formerly DirecTV-10) is a Boeing model 702 direct broadcast satellite that provides high-definition television (HDTV) to DirecTV subscribers in North America.DirecTV-11 T11, formerly known as DirecTV-11, is a Boeing model 702 satellite built by the Boeing Satellite Development Center. Its current name was adopted in 2017. Technology This satellite is functionally identical to T10 and is co-located with SPACE ...

{{Cite web , url=http://dtv.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=324646 , title=The DIRECTV Group, Inc. - DIRECTV Remains Clear HD Leader with 130 HD Channels on Tap for Mid-August , access-date=2008-08-03 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080805052202/http://dtv.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=324646 , archive-date=2008-08-05 , url-status=dead satellites; however, huge numbers of DSS encoded channels still remain. The ACM modulation scheme used by DirecTV prevents regular DVB-S2 demodulators from receiving the signal although the data carried are regular MPEG-4 transport streams.

References

External links

DSS, the "Other Other" MPEG-2 system
Satellite television Digital television

See also

References

External links