This paper evaluates the applicability of MIMO techniques to satellite networks in order to achieve diversity and multiplexing gain through dual polarized antennas. In single satellite scenarios the proposed STTC and OSTBC techniques proposed offer better BER than plain stream multiplexing along each polarizations and SISO transmissions. By adding a satellite with dual polarization antennas and performing a joint distributed OSTBC, the spectral efficiency increases as the satellites transmit in the same frequency band. Finally the hybrid satellite-terrestrial network has been considered for MIMO transmission. In this case, the spectral efficiency can be multiplied by 4 if a joint encoding of satellite and terrestrial signals is performed. In each scenario the broadcast signal follows the DVB-SH standard.