Video: Worldspace Receivers

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan, who shares the following YouTube video about Worldspace satellite radio.

If you’re not familiar, WorldSpace Satellite Radio was a pioneering satellite radio network that operated from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. It provided digital audio broadcasting services to underserved regions, particularly in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. An amazing program, but sadly, funding ran short.

Click here to view on YouTube.

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9 thoughts on “Video: Worldspace Receivers

  1. Mark Fahey

    Wow, I can’t believe my eyes – an article about Worldspace! Well, I’m working on a two-part article to submit to Thomas as Worldsapce is 25 years old this year! Look out for these articles in a few weeks.

    Meanwhile, Our Asian radio network has dug out old voice-tracking masters and restored the Worldsapce alternative-rock station “BOB”. You can listen to it here 24×7 exactly as it was 25 years ago…

    https://www.radioseribatu.com/bob

    Reply
  2. Tracy K Wood

    I owned the Hitachi WS receiver. As a shortwave receiver it proved poor with lots of internal noise and a big spectrum gap. The MW reception cut off around 1611 kHz if I recall. I eventually donated it to a local radio club – even the local historic radio museum refused to take it as a donation.

    I eventually used the Joyear for WS for Afristar and Asiastar reception reception – after struggling with a goofy configuration I got the thing to scan both transponders. Still, WorldSpace had issues with mobile reception so it was doomed to fail.

    Reply
    1. mangosman

      Tracy,
      The MW band in the whole world except the Americas and Greenland, has the highest channel frequency of 1602 kHz even today. in 1978 the AM frequency step was changed to 9 kHz steps increases the number of channels, The USA also wanted more channels but without a drop in audio bandwidth. So instead of changing to 9 kHz step they retained the 10 kHz step but added 10 channels between 1600 – 1700 kHz.
      High Frequency (Short Wave) reception is unlikely to be affected by the 1.4 GHz band receiver.

      Reply
  3. Robert LaRose

    Great technology and it worked very well! We bought a WorldSpace receiver for our son while he was doing his Peace Corps service in rural Ghana (2005-2007). We visited him and saw it worked very well and kept him fully informed listening to the BBC, NPR, etc. At the same time I started working with some people to see about providing one way data downloads using some of the spare bandwidth. At the time, the beta software installation was just too complicated for the typical end user and reserving the satellite bandwidth was also very expensive so the project died. In the meantime 3G and then 4G and now 5G coverage wireless coverage caught up and is now extended out to many rural areas to provide streaming audio and even video capability!

    Reply
  4. mangosman

    WorldSpace used a geostationary satellite 36000 km above the equator. The downlink frequencies 1.452 – 1.492 MHz. Thus the antenna needs to point South from the Northern Hemisphere and North from the Southern Hemisphere.
    I don’t know what the satellite longitude would determine how far East or West it is of the receiver.

    Reply
    1. Mark Fahey

      Mangosman I have a detailed article on Worldsapce coming up here soon as our radio network is celebrating its 25 anniversary this year – in the meantime here we have a footprint map of the reception area – The brown colour is the Wordspace Afristar satellite, and the Blue colour is Asiastar satellite. Each satellite had 3 beams, each beam having some common channels, as well as some regional-specific channels…

      https://www.radioseribatu.com/bob

      Reply
  5. Connor Walsh

    I was able to buy a small receiver in China back in 2003. It was wild to site in the courtyard in Beijing listening to Philip Boucher Hayes on RTE Radio 1 in quality 😀

    Reply
  6. Harald DL1AX

    Thanks for the link. I still have the Hitachi und some very small 2nd generation WorldSpace receivers. A pity the latter are useless nowadays. Originally they said AfriStar will not be received in Europe. But we still tried and reception was no problem here in Germany.

    Reply

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