Cable television headend
Cable television headend is a master facility for receiving
television signals for processing and distribution over a
cable television system. The headend facility is normally unstaffed and surrounded by some type of security fencing and is typically a building or large shed housing electronic equipment used to receive and re-transmit video over the local cable infrastructure. One can also find headends in
power line communication (PLC)
substations.
The cable TV headend will normally have several large
FSS-type
television receive-only satellite television dishes for reception of cable/satellite TV networks such as ESPN, CNN, or HBO; a dedicated, non-movable
dish is required for each
satellite that the cable TV utility wishes to receive cable channels from for distribution over its system. For reception of signals from several adjacent satellites, a larger non-
parabolic multi-satellite dish (such as the Torus or
Simulsat) that can see up to 3 or more satellites is often used. Many
digital cable systems use services like
HITS ("Headend In The Sky", a unit of
Comcast), which carry hundreds of channels on just a few satellites; this is commonly used by small systems to expand service without adding expensive new dishes or other equipment.
Cable TV systems usually also carry local
over-the-air television networks for distribution. Since each terrestrial channel represents a defined
frequency, a dedicated commercial-grade receiving
antenna is needed for each channel that the cable company wishes to receive and distribute. These antennae are often built into a single tower structure called a
master antenna television structure. Often, commercial TV pre-amplifiers are used to strengthen weakened terrestrial TV signals as much as possible before distribution.
Some cable TV systems receive the local television stations' programming by instead having a dedicated
coaxial or
fiber-optic line installed between the local station and the headend. A device called a modulator is installed at the local station's facilities to feed their programming over this line to the cable TV headend, which in turn receives it with another device called a de-modulator. It is then distributed through the cable TV headend to the subscriber. This is usually a more reliable method than receiving the local stations' broadcasts over the air with an antenna, however, off-air reception is used as a backup by the headend if the dedicated line, modulator or demodulator were to fail.
Other sources of programming include those delivered via
fiber optics,
telephone wires, the
Internet,
microwave towers and local community access channels that are sent to the cable headend on an outbound frequency over the cable system itself (known in the industry as
"T"-channels), or via a dedicated line set up by the cable company, as mentioned earlier for reception of local television stations' programming by the headend.
Once a television signal is received, it must be processed. For satellite TV signals, a dedicated commercial satellite receiver is needed for each channel that is to be distributed by the cable system; these are usually rack-mountable receivers that are designed to take up less space than consumer receivers. Analog terrestrial TV signals do not need a special receiver for reception.
Once received, cable television signals are then mixed into the cable system's channel numbering scheme using a series of cable modulators (one for each channel), which is in turn fed into a frequency multiplexer. Once processed, the television signals are sent over the cable system's coaxial cables and continuously re-amplified as needed.
*
North American broadcast television frequencies*
North American cable television frequencies*
HITS website
