PrimeStar was a U.S.

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 ...

broadcasting company formed in 1991 by a consortium of cable television system operators ( TCI Satellite Entertainment Group,

Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, opera ...

Cox Communications Cox Communications, Inc. (also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation, Dimension Cable Services and Times-Mirror Cable) is an American digital cable television provider, telecommunications and home automation services. It i ...

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

and MediaOne) and GE Americom, the satellite arm of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

, collectively referred to as the ''PrimeStar Partners''. PrimeStar was the first medium-powered DBS system in the United States but slowly declined in popularity with the arrival of

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. I ...

in 1994 and

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling ...

in 1996.

Technology

PrimeStar was a medium-powered DBS-style system utilizing FSS technology that used a larger 3-foot (91 cm)

satellite dish A satellite dish is a dish-shaped type of parabolic antenna designed to receive or transmit information by radio waves to or from a communication satellite. The term most commonly means a dish which receives direct-broadcast satellite televisio ...

to receive signals. Broadcast originally in analog, they later converted to digital technology. The system used the DigiCipher 1 system for conditional access control and

video compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...

. The video format was

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, ...

. Primestar's satellite receivers were made by

General Instrument General Instrument (GI) was an American electronics manufacturer based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, specializing in semiconductors and cable television equipment. They formed in New York City in 1923 as an electronics manufacturer. During the 1950s, ...

. PrimeStar was owned by a consortium of

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

companies who leased equipment to

subscriber The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...

s through the local cable company. The company was in the process of converting to a high-powered DBS platform when it was purchased and shut down by DirecTV. The Tempo-1 and Tempo-2 DBS satellites acquired by PrimeStar from the defunct ASkyB were renamed

DirecTV-5 T5 (formerly DirecTV-5) is a dormant communications satellite launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan in May, 2002 to provide mainly Spanish language satellite television programs to DirecTV customers from the 119 degrees West longitudinal ...

and DirecTV-6, respectively.

History

The system initially launched using medium-powered FSS satellites that were facing obsolescence with the onset of high-powered DBS and its much smaller, eighteen-inch satellite dishes. In a move to convert the platform to DBS, PrimeStar, originally based in

Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route 1 (City Avenue). It was originally two sep ...

before moving to the suburbs of Denver, Colorado in 1997, bid for the 110-degree satellite location that was eventually awarded to a never-launched direct broadcast satellite service by MCI and

News Corporation News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...

called ASkyB, or ''

American Sky Broadcasting Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

'', named after News Corp's

British Sky Broadcasting Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

, also named as a combination of the merged companies ''British'' Satellite ''Broadcasting'' and ''Sky'' Television. The ASkyB company sold the incomplete

Tempo 1 T5 (formerly DirecTV-5) is a dormant communications satellite launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan in May, 2002 to provide mainly Spanish language satellite television programs to DirecTV customers from the 119 degrees West longitudinal ...

and Tempo 2 DBS satellites to PrimeStar in the process of going out of business. PrimeStar launched Tempo-2 in 1997 but it was not used for many years. PrimeStar stored the other satellite, Tempo-1, until the company and the two satellites were purchased by

. DirecTV eventually launched the Tempo 1 satellite after years of delays as the DirecTV-5 satellite in 2002. Meanwhile, ASkyB's license for the 110-degree satellite location, and an uplink center, was resold to

EchoStar EchoStar Corporation is an American company, a worldwide provider of satellite communication and Internet services through its Hughes Network Systems and EchoStar Satellite Services business segments. EchoStar is based out of unincorporated Ar ...

, the parent company of

. The 110-degree satellite is now named EchoStar West 110 and is the most commonly used satellite, along with 119 as both can be received with a single wide-format parabolic dish, providing signal to North America. PrimeStar Partners sold its assets to

in 1999 and after briefly being known as ''PrimeStar by DirecTV'' all subscribers were converted to the DirecTV platform. The PrimeStar brand and its FSS broadcast platform was shut down. Meanwhile, Tempo 1 and Tempo 2 satellite remained and were renamed DirecTV-5 and DirecTV-6, respectively, and moved to several locations to serve DirecTV customers.

Features

During Primestar's years as a competing satellite television provider, it originally had a 95-channel lineup. However, beginning on April 20, 1997, Primestar announced it would add 65 channels, for a total of 160 channels. However, due to a lack of capacity on the FSS platform, many channels only aired for part of the day or week (e.g., MuchMusic USA aired weekdays from 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET, and weekends from 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. ET). Primestar, also at this time in 1997, grouped their channels by category, (e.g., "NEWS", "FAMILY", "SPORTS", "MOVIES", etc.), and added a color-coded button on the remote for each category. When pressed, it would bring the user to the beginning of that category, (e.g., pressing the orange "FAMILY" button would bring the user to

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

which was first in that category). Primestar called this feature "Hyper-Surfing". (Earlier remotes that lacked the buttons could instead use repetitive channel numbers to bring them to the desired category.)

New uses for old equipment

Old PrimeStar satellite dishes are popular among hobbyists for

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...

(FTA) satellite broadcasts on the K_u band transponders of FSS satellites. The dishes are also popular for wireless computer networking as high-gain

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

antennas. The antennas are also used by amateur (ham) radio operators to transmit two-way amateur television.

References

External links