G-Sat (''Global Satellite'') is a subscription-based direct-to-home (DTH)

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location.ITU Radio Regulations, Section IV. Radio Stations and Systems ...

service commercially available in the Philippines. G-Sat is owned by

Global Satellite Technology Services Global Satellite Technology Services (formerly known as First United Broadcasting Corporation) is a broadcast radio and television company in the Philippines. Its original station FUBC TV-9 in Zamboanga was an affiliate of BBC from 1974 to 1986 ...

(GSTS), registered in the Philippines with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). G-Sat also carried pay TV channels from

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

(through its feed of some channels),

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, which TV shows and movies subtitled in

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

and

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

. It is operated and managed by international and professional management groups engaged in the business of: satellite wireless transmission,

WIMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

transmission, landline transmission, satellite internet data transmission, satellite direct-to-home TV operation,

terrestrial television Terrestrial television, or over-the-air television (OTA) is a type of television broadcasting in which the content is signal transmission, transmitted via radio waves from the terrestrial (Earth-based) transmitter of a TV station to a TV rece ...

operation,

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

data service, head end in the sky operation, content aggregation, production and distribution, consolidation of telecom and broadcasting management.G-Sat ''About Us''
/ref> In August 2016, G-Sat was moved to SES-9 from their former satellite broadcaster NSS 11 due on its system upgrade.

Technical information

G Sat broadcasts in DVB-S (for standard definition channels and audio channels) and DVB-S2 (for HD channels) on SES-9 satellite at 108.2°E. Originally, prior to its system upgrade in August 2016, a loophole has been discovered that half of G Sat's channels were free-to-air, which can be received using an existing free-to-air satellite receiver, this allowed viewers to watch some half of the channels without any existing subscription (in a way to United Kingdom's

Freesat Freesat is a British free-to-air satellite television service, first formed as a joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc and now owned by Everyone TV (itself owned by all of the four UK Public broadcasting, public service broadcasters, BBC, ...

service). However, as of August 2016, due to its system upgrade and migration to SES-9, all of the channels are now encrypted (except Golden Nation Network and BBC World Service), which now requires subscription. In January 2017, G Sat announced to their subscribers to rescan their subscriber's receivers for the channel line-up's change.

Frame rate Frame rate, most commonly expressed in frame/s, or FPS, is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (Film frame, frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and moti ...

s in some

NTSC NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...

-relying TV channels, including GMA,

Kapamilya Channel Kapamilya Channel () is a 24-hour Filipino pay television network owned and operated by ABS-CBN Corporation, a subsidiary of Lopez Holdings Corporation. Its headquarters is located at the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Center in Quezon City and serves ...

A2Z A2Z may refer to: * A2Z (2006 film), a 2006 German action film *A2Z (TV channel) A2Z is a Philippine free-to-air blocktime broadcast television network based in Quezon City, with its studios located in Ortigas Center, Pasig. It serves as a flag ...

TAP Movies TAP Movies (stylized as tap MOVIES) is a Philippine pay television channel dedicated to Hollywood films owned by TAP Digital Media Ventures Corporation. It was launched on October 1, 2021. Programming Much like other English-language movie chann ...

, and others have been dropped from 30/60 FPS to 25/50 FPS (which 25/50 frames per second is based on

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a color encoding system for analog television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

Status of competition and controversy

Dream Satellite TV Dream Satellite TV was the first all-digital Direct-To-Home (DTH) television broadcasting service via satellite in the Philippines. Broadcasting from the Dream Broadcast Center located at the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga. Content is ...

filed a complaint with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) against Global Broadcasting and Multimedia, Inc. (G Sat) for offering A DTH service in the Philippines without a franchise and a license from Philippine authorities, namely the Philippine Congress for a broadcast franchise and the NTC for a Certificate of Public Convenience. Aside from Dream, the Lopez group,

SkyCable Sky Cable (stylized as SKYcable) is a cable television service of Sky Cable Corporation in the Philippines. It covers areas across the country with both digital and analog cable services, and it has 700,000 subscribers, controlling 45% of th ...

, a sister company of

ABS-CBN ABS-CBN is a leading Philippine media and content company. It serves as the flagship media brand of ABS-CBN Corporation, a subsidiary of Lopez Holdings Corporation. Once the country's largest free-to-air television network, ABS-CBN has since ...

, also filed a similar complaint against GBMI. It argued that GBMI's illegal entry into the industry will result in the unnecessary duplication of an existing service that existing cable TV and DTH-TV service providers already adequately provide. On July 30, 2020, President

Rodrigo Duterte Rodrigo Roa Duterte (, ; born March 28, 1945) is a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the 16th president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022. He is the first Philippine president from Mindanao, and is the oldest person to assum ...

signed Republic Act No. 11481, which extended the franchise of First United Broadcasting Corporation to 25 years.

In-house channels

Current

Currently, G Sat owns its in-house channels: * One Media Network - news, current affairs and lifestyle channel *Global Sports Network - sports channel * Golf Channel Philippines - Dedicated golf channel, in partnership with

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

NBCUniversal International Networks NBCUniversal International Networks & Direct-to-Consumer, formerly NBC Universal Global Networks, Universal Networks International and NBCUniversal International Networks, is a part of NBCUniversal, owned by Comcast. History When NBCUniversal was ...

*Music Quest - Karaoke channel *GSAT News Channel - news and current affairs channel *Global Movies Channel - movie channel

Former channels

*GKTV 3/PCTV 3 *Global News Network *Global Pinoy Cinema - Filipino movie channel *Global Theater - Mandarin movie channel *One Media Network *Golden Nation Network * GCLTHP Movies Channel (GMC)

References