 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "PrimeStar" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | |
| Industry | Direct broadcast satellite broadcasting |
|---|---|
| Founded | November 1990; 34 years ago (1990-11) |
| Defunct | September 30, 2000; 24 years ago (2000-09-30) |
| Fate | Acquired byDirecTV |
| Successor | DirecTV |
| Headquarters | Denver,Colorado |
| Website | Primestar.com |
PrimeStar was an Americandirect broadcast satellite broadcasting company formed in November 1990 by seven cable television companies includingComcast Corp. and TCI Communications Corp.[1] PrimeStar was the first medium-powered DBS system in the United States but slowly declined in popularity with the arrival ofDirecTV in 1994 andDish Network in 1996.
PrimeStar was a medium-powered DBS-style system utilizingFSS technology that used a larger 3-foot (91 cm)satellite dish to receive signals.
Broadcast originally in analog, they later converted to digital technology. The system used theDigiCipher 1 system forconditional access control andvideo compression. The video format wasMPEG-2.[2] Primestar's satellite receivers were made byGeneral Instrument.
PrimeStar was owned by a consortium ofcable television companies who leased equipment tosubscribers through the local cable company.
The company was in the process of converting to a high-poweredDBS 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 renamedDirecTV-5 and DirecTV-6, respectively.
The system initially launched using medium-powered FSS satellites that were facing obsolescence with the onset of high-poweredDBS and its much smaller, eighteen-inch satellite dishes. In a move to convert the platform to DBS, PrimeStar, originally based inBala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania before moving to the suburbs of Denver, Colorado in 1997,[3] bid for the 110-degree satellite location that was eventually awarded to a never-launched direct broadcast satellite service byMCI andNews Corporation called ASkyB, orAmerican Sky Broadcasting, named after News Corp'sBritish Sky Broadcasting, also named as a combination of the merged companiesBritish SatelliteBroadcasting andSky Television.
The ASkyB company sold the incompleteTempo 1 and Tempo 2 DBS satellites to PrimeStar in the process of going out of business.[4] 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 byDirecTV.[5] DirecTV eventually launched the Tempo 1 satellite after years of delays as the DirecTV-5 satellite in 2002.[6] Meanwhile, ASkyB's license for the 110-degree satellite location, and an uplink center, was resold toEchoStar, the parent company ofDish Network. 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 toDirecTV in 1999 and after briefly being known asPrimeStar by DirecTV all subscribers were converted to the DirecTV platform in 2000. 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.
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[7]). 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 toNickelodeon 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.)
Old PrimeStar satellite dishes are popular among hobbyists forfree-to-air (FTA) satellite broadcasts on theKu band transponders of FSS satellites.
The dishes are also popular for wireless computer networking as high-gainWi-Fi antennas. The antennas are also used by amateur (ham) radio operators to transmit two-wayamateur television.