When was satellite TV introduced?
Satellite television
By 1980, satellite television was well established in the USA and Europe. On 26 April 1982, the first satellite channel in the UK, Satellite Television Ltd. (later Sky1), was launched.[71] Its signals were transmitted from the ESA's Orbital Test Satellites.[71] Between 1981 and 1985, TVRO systems' sales rates increased as prices fell. Advances in receiver technology and the use of gallium arsenide FET technology enabled the use of smaller dishes. Five hundred thousand systems, some costing as little as $2000, were sold in the US in 1984.[68][72] Dishes pointing to one satellite were even cheaper.[73] People in areas without local broadcast stations or cable television service could obtain good-quality reception with no monthly fees.[68][70] The large dishes were a subject of much consternation, as many people considered them eyesores, and in the US most condominiums, neighborhoods, and other homeowner associations tightly restricted their use, except in areas where such restrictions were illegal.[3] These restrictions were altered in 1986 when the Federal Communications Commission ruled all of them illegal.[65] A municipality could require a property owner to relocate the dish if it violated other zoning restrictions, such as a setback requirement, but could not outlaw their use.[65] The necessity of these restrictions would slowly decline as the dishes got smaller.[65]
Television in the United Kingdom
Channel 5 was the fifth analogue terrestrial channel to launch, in March 1997. Due to constraints with the available UHF frequencies at the time, many households had to retune their video recorders, which shared the frequency on their RF output with the frequency used by Channel 5's new broadcasts. Channel 5 was the first terrestrial channel to also broadcast via satellite. From 2006 onwards, Channel 5 would launch new digital channels and an Internet on-demand service. After changing ownership several times, in May 2014 Channel 5 and its sister channels would be acquired by Viacom, an American media conglomerate.