Satellite TV is television programming that is delivered to various television sets around the world with the help of a satellite dish, technically called “parabolic reflector antenna”. This enables the any owner of this “satellite dish” to view any channel from any country in the world.
Some of these satellite TV broadcast services include:
DStv
Digital Satellite Television or as it more popularly known, DStv is a transmission satellite service in Sub-Saharan Africa that is owned by Multichoice. This service has since the year 1994 been calling the shots in satellite TV broadcast in Nigeria and it makes a lot of channels as well as services available to all their customers. They have more than 11 million subscribers in Nigeria presently and they have been making offers that will suit any income group in the nation so that viewers can subscribe to them and enjoy the service.
Some the products they have include DStv Mobile – a mobile TV service that launches the Digital Video Broadcast Handheld (DVB-H) technology, allowing viewers to use their phones to access the service. Other products include DStv Walka and DStv Drifta, then there is DStv Premium, the service’s bouquet.
Gotv
Gotv Nigeria is a pay-per-view satellite television broadcast service offered in Africa by Multichoice Africa, the owners of DStv. But unlike the DStv, Gotv does not need a satellite dish installation to work. Instead, it makes use of the most recent Digital Terrestrial Broadcast Technology (DVB-T2) and this connotes that the services it offers can only be launched through TV masts and are only accessible to people in locations where the Gotv transmitter coverage reaches and as a result of this, it is not all that affected by the weather conditions in that area like other satellite TV services.
Gotv was deployed in Nigeria on the 11th of October, 2011, in the city of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria – the bed of TV broadcast in the nation and much sooner the service had extended its reach to other states in the country such as Benin, Owerri, Akwa Ibom, Port Harcourt and more.
StarTimes
StarTimes is an electronics and media company that is based in china, however, the company has a very firm impact in Africa in the sense that the continent is a very viable market for the satellite television broadcast network. All its subscribers are able to access their Digital Terrestrial Television as well as satellite television as long as they have paid for it. More so, the broadcast service makes digital television technology available to countries and industries for television broadcast that are working to make a shift from analog to digital television.
When StarTimes made an appearance in the African satellite television broadcast service market, things took a deep turn in the sense that the local pattern of the TV industry was reshaped and TV broadcast which used to be a bit expensive became quite cheap for anyone who needed the service and not just the well-to-do in Nigeria.
Mytv
Mytv Broadcasting or as it more commonly called, Mytv, is a satellite television broadcast service that has its base in Malaysia and provides free Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in Malaysia as well as other countries in Africa. It is owned by Altel Holdings/Altel Communications and it began to broadcast in the year 2015. Officially speaking, the brand name of the Digital Terrestrial Television is MyFreeview starting in August, 2015, be that as it may, the legal name of the satellite TV has not changed.
Since February, 2017, the set top box has been released for sale and this delay was as a result of issues regarding the building of infrastructure. The official deployment of the internal service, MyFreeview was done on the 6th of June, 2017.
HiTV
High Television most commonly known and called by its mnemonic HiTV is an Entertainment Highways digital satellite television service that was launched in Nigeria in the year 2007 having numerous channels. The service was making use of Hypercable Digital Terrestrial tech to enable it provide users with access to entertainment television in the country. HiTV as at the 1st of August, 2007 threw into propulsion its Direct to Home (DTH) Satellite technology.
As time went by the service began to make its service accessible only on satellite to its subscribers who had to pay the sum of N3,500 (a sum of $27.73) a month. The satellite television broadcast service was the first television broadcast service in the whole of Africa to launch Hypercable which so happens to be a decoder system that required subscribers to pay before they could view any of the channels in the service.