What are polarities?
Broadcasting a signal by bouncing it off of a satellite is expensive. Satellite providers try to squeeze every ounce of usable bandwidth from a satellite by polarizing the signal. By polarizing it, they can reuse a frequency a 2nd time. Older satellites, such as the one Primestar use to use and the 2 Dish network currently use at 105 and 121 use orthogonal polarity, typically referred as horizontal and vertical polarity. Newer DBS satellites use a circular polarity, commonly referred to as left hand (clockwise) and right hand (counterclockwise) polarity. All even transponders on a satellite correspond to a given polarity while all odd transponders correspond to the opposite polarity.
