Astro (Hopeland)

Astro is a Hopelandian satellite television operator. It is owned by HT&T since 2011. It provides a satellite service to Hopelandian households over two satellites, one of which is used to carry signals of local channels. The company is headquartered in Albany and has its central headend there and also has offices in New Cardiff and Palmerston.
==History==
Astro was founded in 1991 as Hopelandian Satellite Broadcasting and wanted a trading name for their DTH satellite platform. Richard Lawson imagined "something new and unique that grabs the attention of the potential subscriber" in September 1992 and coined the name Astrowave. Astrowave began formal operations in February 1993. It started off as an analog platform of six channels: All-Sports Network, HNC, Discovery Channel, MTV, Cartoon Network (which had just launched) and one scrambled service, HBO. During its first months it had gained twenty thousand subscribers in both ends of the country. By the end of the year it expanded its content scope to twenty channels, including four scrambled channels plus the Netpack service which consisted of three channels, representing NBN, IBS and UBS. After a law was passed in 1994, Hopelandian Public Television was added to the offer. At the start of the 1995 television season, MTNet and the national feeds of TotalAccess and XTN were added.
In 1996, Astrowave started digital satellite broadcasts. The launch of the new service gave Astrowave and many companies a chance of introducing Sierran channels new to Hopeland, thus playing a key role in the growth of the Hopelandian pay-TV industry. By this time the channel had to provide east and west coast stations of NBN, IBS, UBS, MTN, TotalAccess, XTN, Antena Latina and Telemetro and two feeds (also east and west) of HPT National. The old analog service was deprecated in October 1998. Under the new digital service a new package system was introduced: Choice featuring 40 channels and Plus featuring 80 channels, plus a dedicated Latino package with an additional ten channels in Spanish. Other multilingual channel packages appeared over time.
In 1996, Astro upgraded to a digital platform, the first in South Sierra to do so, months before DirecTV did the same in Latin Sierra.
In October 2000, it acquired the former satellite operator Prime TV, who was under Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to an unstable situation.
Astrowave replaced DMX channels with the Sound City satellite radio channels in 2002. These included about sixty specialist services and the main NBN, IBS and HPR radio stations from large cities.
In 2011, Astro acquired the failing ethnic television provider Ethnica Television who was facing administration. Ethnica's channels were incorporated into Astro's service.
==Satellites==
==Receivers==
*Techmedia: The first generation of receivers, operational during the analog age during the provider's first few years.
*Wavebox: The first digital decoder, used from 1996 to the mid-2000s. It was basically adapted from DirecTV's software, though featuring some local software enhancements for the Hopelandian market. It had a basic EPG.
*Smartbox: Adaptation of the Wavebox but using functionalities from Microsoft's WebTV system. Used from 1998 to 2004, when they were oficially deprecated.
==Services==
==Channels==
Main article: List of channels on Astro (Hopeland)