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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 06-07-08/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
always work at something else”, says
Carlos who is free to do what he wants.
But he’s too much of a TV enthusiast;
anything else would probably just irri-
tate him. He runs his business togeth-
er with his daughter: “I might have to
hire a helper soon.”
So how is his business doing? “I sell
about 1000 receivers a year. In 2011
70% of them were HD models, 20%
SD models and 10% analog boxes.”
Receivers make up 60% of his sales
followed by 30% LNBs and then 10%
splitters and DiSEqC switches. “This
adds up to about US$100,000 dollars
in sales a year.” For the future he’s ex-
pecting the number of combo receiv-
ers to increase thanks in large part to
the strong expansion of the ISDB-T
terrestrial network with all of its new
HD channels.
At first glance the origin of his cus-
tomers is surprising: “20% of my
shipments go to the Pará province in
northern Brazil. It’s a sparsely popu-
lated area and for that reason satellite
reception is often the only way to get
TV. And since those people might still
be very poor, they somehow manage
to get the money together and quite
often buy the components from my
shop.” It’s interesting to note that Car-
los achieves only 30% of his sales from
his own website (www.antenaomega-
digital.net); 70% of his sales are gen-
erated by his presence on the Internet
platform mercadolibre, the Brazilian
version of eBay. Foreigners are anoth-
er large customer segment; they want
to watch their TV from home or TV in
their native language. “On my website
I show those who are interested what
channels in what language can be re-
ceived here.”
So, what’s this “Tubo” or “Turbo”
from Carlos all about? “It’s an exten-
sion tube that amplifies the received
circularly polarized signals in the C-
band.” This tube with the reception
probes is placed in front of the LNB and
aids in the reception of weaker signals.
“It replaces the Teflon tab that would
otherwise be used to separate the cir-
1. Carlos sells all varieties of LNBs in his
Internet store.
2. Sky took over DirecTV a few years ago.
The dishes that were used for DirecTV
became useless - that is until Carlos
had a special adapter built for him. It
lets you install the new LNBs on the old
dishes; the small plastic adapter is still a
bestseller for him.