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When you subscribe to a digital satellite television service such as Sky, what will most interest you is the wide range of entertainment on offer, but you might also be interested in the Sky Box Dish.

Unlike the old fashioned TV signals which were sent as analogue signals and picked by a TV aerial, the signals for your Sky Box Dish are beamed down from a satellite. In the case of Sky, it's the Astra satellites which provide the signals.

For those that are interested, a satellite dish is a type of parabolic antenna that receives, and can also transmit, a electromagnetic signal. The points about the shape of the dish is that it reflects the incoming signal into a focal point which is called a feedhorn. This is on the end of the arm that sits in front of the dish.

The feedhorn collects the signal, puts them through a LNB, a low-noise block converter and essentially, after a few more gizmos, converts it into pictures and sounds.

The Sky Box Dish, like modern dish examples, measure roughly 18 inches to 31 inches in diameter and are usually made from perforated metal. They are fixed in one position which allows them, from one orbital position, to receive Ku-band reception. In Europe, frequencies are between 10.7 and 12.75 GHz.

Two of the most frequently asked questions about the Sky Box Dish, is can it be painted and does the weather affect satellite reception?

Firstly, can it be painted, as long as you don't use lead-based, or glossy paint.

Secondly, as to the weather, it can be affected, but rarely is. The Sky digital satellite signal is highly reliable 365 days of the year throughout the whole country, achieving a signal 99.96% of the time. So whether you're experiencing torrential rain, electrical storms, gales, or snow, your Sky Box Dish should not let you down.

But one of the biggest upsides with a Sky Box Dish is that the TV in the U.K. is going completely digital. It's known as the Digital Switchover and it has already started, and the process will happen TV region by TV region, finishing in 2012.

What the Digital Switchover really comes down to is losing the five terrestrial channels, supplied by analogue signals, and getting new digital signals via an alternative method. And one of these methods, and the most convenient, is via a Sky Box Dish.

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