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- Digital Canadian
Satellite History -
The Canadian Digital Satellite industry, also known as
Canadian Direct to Home has a
long and interesting history to it. The Hughes Directv/USSB system was
the first successful small dish digital satellite company in the
United States, launching a limited service in 1994.
In the same year, several Canadian satellite companies as well as federal regulators
(CRTC) recognized the need for a Canadian Direct to
Home digital satellite service. It issued a call for
companies interested in initiating a Canadian digital satellite
undertaking to file an application for a CRTC license.
Two companies initially made the first applications, the first
was Expressvu, which was wholly owned by BCE,
Canada's largest Telecommunications holding company. They
initially intended to make use of Canada's only available
commercial satellites to broadcast a mixture of Canadian and
American digital satellite channels to subscribers across Canada.
The second company, was to be known as PowerDirectv, a
partnership between Canada's Power Corp., which had radio and
television holdings and the U.S. Directv satellite
broadcaster.
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An Early Expressvu Canadian digital satellite system with 24" dish and linear LNBF. Early customers were converted to a new LNBF and dishes repointed upon the successful launch of the Nimiq DBS satellite. This also allowed dish sizes to shrink to 18".
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Both companies were successfully licensed in
December of 1994. However shortly after, a large controversy
erupted over the CRTC's steep requirement of 50% Canadian
content. The Canadian content rules states that there must be
equal Canadian channels for every non-Canadian channel carried by
the licensed Canadian satellite company. Additionally,
Canadian satellite broadcasters were forced to
use Canadian satellites for transmission of their signals.
Further adding to the problem was that only CRTC approved
non-Canadian channels could be made available to Canadian
customers. Unfortunately, for PowerDirectv, an overwhelming
percentage of the U.S. channels broadcast from Directv were not
approved for broadcast in Canada. PowerDirectv's arguement to the
CRTC was there at the time, there were not enough Canadian
channels in existance to match the amount of U.S. channels that
they proposed to broadcast. PowerDirectv was able to amend the
Canadian satellite requirement to allow them to broadcast the
U.S. portions of their signal to Canadians via the U.S. Directv
satellite and the Canadian portions via the Canadian Anik E1 or
E2 satellites.
Unfortunately for Canadians patiently waiting for a
alternative to cable vision, these problems caused substantial
delays in bringing a successful digital satellite product to the
Canadian satellite market. It would not be the last however, as
in March of 1996, a near total system failure on Telesat's Anik
E1 satellite caused a near total loss of all satellite capacity.
This meant that Canada no longer has the satellite capacity to
support 2 digital satellite companies. For PowerDirectv, this was
the last straw and shortly after they announced that they were
abandoning plans to launch a satellite service in Canada. This
meant that Expressvu now had the only license, however they had
still not been successful in launching a service, nearly 2 years
after they had been licensed, despite a number of promised and
missed milestones.
Early 1997, nearly 3 years after Expressvu had received their
license from the CRTC, they had still not brought their service
to the market. In the meantime, many Canadians had grown weary of
broken promised and had purchased U.S. "Grey Market" satellite
systems from Directv. Expressvu had little tolerance for these US
systems and declared them illegal and campaigned heavily for
Canadians to wait until they were able to bring their service to
the market. Early 1997 also brought in 2 new CRTC licensees, both
of which were considered risky. Star Choice Television Network, a
small company from New Brunswick and Alphastar Canada, owned by
troubled Canadian satellite equipment manufacturer Tee-Comm
Electronics Inc. A third company, Homestar which was owned by
Canadian Cable vision company Shaw Communications also applied
for a license, however it was rejected.
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Alphastar Canada system with 36" dish. Alphastar was the last Canadian DBS company licensed, yet the first to market only to fail little more than a year later due to financial and organizational problems.
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Ironically, Alphastar was the last company to be licensed, but
the first to bring a successful product to market in the spring
of 1997. Due to the limited satellite capacity of
Canadian satellites Anik E1 and E2, Alphastar
was able to get an exception which allowed them to use a U.S.
medium powered satellite (Telstar 402R) to broadcast their
service. Unfortunately, this meant that their minimum dish size
would be a clumsy 36". Alphastar has also launched a US based
satellite service to the United States using the same Telstar
402R satellite. This meant that they could save on overhead by
eliminating duplicate carriage on many US channels.
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Star Choice Television Network was the second entrant onto the Canadian DBS market. Star Choice later merged with Shaw Communications, giving it the much needed financial support to compete in a changing Canadian marketplace.
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The summer of
1997 brought a successful Star Choice launch to the Canadian
marketplace. Star choice initially planned to utilize U.S.
Echostar equipment for the satellite service, however earlier in
the year, they merged with Shaw Communications, who was unable to
successfully obtain their own DTH satellite license from the CRTC
and also recognizing that the fledgling Star Choice venture
lacked sufficient capital to properly compete with BCE's
Expressvu Inc. After the merger, Star Choice abandoned the
Echostar equipment platform in favor of the cable vision favored
General Instrument platform, which was being used by the U.S.
Primestar service. Due to lack of satellite capacity, Star Choice
was forced to share the limited satellite capacity with
Expressvu, aboard the Anik E2 satellite.
The fall of 1997, finally brought the successful launch of
Expressvu, who had now taken advantage of the abandoned Star
Choice Echostar equipment deal and had adopted the Echostar
platform for their service. Expressvu was licensed by Echostar
for use of their name and trademarks in Canada and began to
market their satellite service as "Expressvu - Dish Network
Canada". Unfortunately for many Canadians who had jumped on the
opportunity to own an Alphastar Canada System, Alphastar
announced troubles in late 1997, which eventually led to a
shutdown of the Alphastar Canada and Alphastar U.S. services.
Alphastar as it turned out was underfunded and was unable to
successfully sway investors to their company. Fortunately many
Alphastar customers were able to salvage some of their
investments by taking advantage of a free Star Choice or
Expressvu trade-in offer.
Expressvu eventually added "Bell" before their name, to take advantage of Bell Canada's good will and recognition in Canada. Today, Star
Choice and Bell
Expressvu remain Canada's only digital satellite companies in
Canada.
More information on both services is
available below. As well, we also have some dedicated
Canadian Satellite Digital Forums for those wishing to discuss these topics.
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08/04/2008 11:20 AM
In order to give the website a better focus, we are phasing out the less popular areas of the site, including the high definition and digital video recorder areas and forums. This will leave the site focused on digital satellite television and satellite radio.
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Hairspray
HBOE
6:00 pm ET
It started as a John Waters-directed movie, then transitioned into a hit stage musical. Now it comes full circle by taking movie form again in its more tuneful incarnation. The entertaining tale lets John Travolta make an amusing gender switch as Edna Turnblad, mother of aspiring 1960s dance-show participant Tracy (newcomer Nikki Blonsky). Others (Michelle Pfeiffer, Brittany Snow) don't want plus-sized Tracy to have a spotlight.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
MAX
6:50 pm ET
A science professor and volcanologist and his nephew encounter strange creatures and stranger lands as they travel beneath the Earth's surface. Professor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is supposed to care for his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) for 10 days. Instead it seems more like 100 million years, as they plummet through the Earth's layers and encounter bad-tempered dinosaurs.
House
FOX
8:00 pm ET
Now here's a patient House (Hugh Laurie) can relate to. In this episode, he and his team try to figure out what's wrong with a man suffering from chronic pain -- something House has lived with for years. Foreman and Thirteen (Omar Epps, Olivia Wilde) deal with their budding relationship, and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) gets a lesson in juggling work and parenthood in "Painless."
Santa Who?
ABCF
7:00 pm ET
So if he doesn't know who he is, can we call him Shirley? Leslie Nielsen stars as Santa Claus in this limp 2000 comic variation on the "Miracle on 34th Street" theme. Like the Kriss Kringle of "Miracle," he's a store Santa who's actually the genuine article. But unlike the 1947 Kringle, who knew he was real even if nobody else did, this Claus is clueless, thanks to a fall from his sleigh that left him with amnesia. He'd better snap out of it soon, or there'll be a lot of disappointed kiddies on Christmas morning.
NBA Basketball
ESPN
8:00 pm ET
A rematch of last season's Eastern Conference semifinals is on tap in Boston as Kevin Garnett and the Celtics host Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic. The Magic got the better of the Celts when they met in May, winning in seven games, but that was with the now-departed Hedo Turkoglu getting the shots in key moments. For the Celts, the big question is if Garnett is his old self after last year's knee woes, but Rasheed Wallace's presence should help.
Smallville
CW
8:00 pm ET
Tess (Cassidy Freeman) kidnaps Lois (Erica Durance), determined to find out where she went when she disappeared for weeks. Chloe (Allison Mack) forms a resistance group with Oliver (Justin Hartley), while Clark (Tom Welling) makes a significant decision about Zod (Callum Blue) after learning of Lois' memory of the future in the new episode "Pandora."
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
ABCF
9:00 pm ET
OK, some Christmas specials and movies based on songs of the season are adorable -- lookin' at you, "Rudolph," "Frosty," "Little Drummer Boy." Others, like this 2001 comedy, are just laughable, and not in a good way. A little boy sees his mom in a lip lock with a certain red-suited gent and assumes his folks are splitting up. Wouldn't most kids jump at the chance to have Santa for a stepdad? Good thing Connie Sellecca has some good Christmas movies on her resume, so she can be forgiven for this one.
Medium
CBS
9:00 pm ET
When Allison's (Patricia Arquette) eyes develop a sensitivity to light, the sunglasses she dons display numbers that may be linked to the life expectancy of those she looks at. Life expectancy also is on the mind of Joe (Jake Weber), who starts taking better care of himself after Allison dreams about his father in the new episode "The Future's So Bright." Miguel Sandoval, Sofia Vassilieva, Maria Lark and David Cubitt also star.
Platinum Babies
WE
9:00 pm ET
The new episode "Betsy & Brad" features a doting Southern California husband who is only too happy to indulge his wife's dream of a baby shower in the form of a $20,000 tea party, complete with $5,000 in baby props, accompanied by harp and violin music. And the free spending continues as they select a state-of-the-art birthing suite, where their daughter is born, captured by a $31,000 baby photographer, as well as hiring a pricey "baby-proofer to the stars."
NUMB3RS
CBS
10:00 pm ET
When robbers strike a diamond exchange and take hostages, Don (Rob Morrow) and his team think the culprits are copying a convict's criminal strategies, and they find an unlikely ally in convicted bus hijacker John Buckley (Fisher Stevens, reprising his guest role). David Krumholtz, Judd Hirsch and Alimi Ballard also star in the new episode "Con Job."
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