Patent ID: RE39303

Claim:
A satellite television system that provides a large number of television channels to each passenger on an aircraft derived from direct broadcast satellites, said system comprising: an antenna that comprises steering means for steering the antenna toward the satellite in response to control signals supplied thereto; antenna control means for providing the control signals to the antenna and for processing status signals derived from the antenna to steer the antenna so that it is locked onto encoded RF signals transmitted by the satellite, and for downconverting the encoded RF signals to provide encoded left hand and right hand circularly polarized RF signals that correspond to a plurality of encoded television channels; a receiver coupled to the antenna control means for processing the downconverted encoded RF signals to provide encoded video and audio output signals corresponding to the plurality of television channels, and for feeding back the status signals to the antenna control means which are used to steer the antenna to lock it onto the RF signal received from the satellite; a modulator coupled to the receiver for modulating the encoded video and audio signals; a video and audio distribution system coupled to the modulator for distributing the modulated and encoded video and audio signals to each passenger's seat; seat electronics circuitry coupled to the video and audio distribution system that comprises a demodulator, a decoder and digital to analog converters, and a tuner, for demodulating, decoding and D/A converting the modulated and encoded video and audio signals into signals that may be viewed and heard by a passenger at a seat by way of a display and headphones.