WHAT IS A SPOT BEAM?
A spot beam is a often used term now, and it affects what local stations you can possibly receive. The normal satellites send out a signal pretty indiscriminately. It simply is a microwave transmitter beaming data across the US. The spot beam is the same thing, but it points at a reflector that has a narrower focus. The upshot of this is that depending on where you are in the country, you won’t see the beams pointing away from you. That is, the satellite sends a beam similar to a flashlight beam at one spot of the country. A 100-200 mile wide spot. Why use spot beams? Because there’s only a limited amount of space up there. They can’t broadcast anything they want, the FCC would kill them. They only have so much bandwidth/frequency space. To make the most use out of it all, they rebroadcast on the same frequencies in different spots. This is *perfect* for sending local channels. So on frequency “3” they might send locals to Birmingham, Atlanta, and Denver and so forth. All on that same
