Depends on your eyes

Some people can notice but the beauty of 720p is that it can be made to 24p like. Few advantages here and there as its being progressive scan !

Waiting for Installer to call me. I am kinda envious that a lot of folks managed to get it here. Oh well when is my turn

I am on the same boat as yours. Registered on the first day , still waiting a call from the installer. Its just me , I always get the worst installers for :-

1. streamyx
2. Astro

and everything else !

I am still waiting for my turn , I hope they call up ASAP . Otherwise I'll have to call the ccall centre

I am getting pissed , i registered on Friday. I'll give one more day. If not , I am going to fire an e-mail to ASTRO to get it done or its MCMC to them.

ecam , i am guessing you're an astro insider. I am wondering if i Could PM you my ac number or something to check on my status

Thanks

I understand it can take 10 days , but again isn't it strange when someone who registered later then you and get it first. I am not sure how their system works anyway. I am willing to wait , I just find it strange.

I am going to call them tomorrow to find their status ! Oh well I am not sure how their system works

Yeah the HD channels are free for now. Anyway here is the thing , for those who did not get calls. Call up ASTRO , give them their account number and tell them that other folks in your area got it installed and ask them to forward this case to the manager or something. Thats what I did and now I'm waiting a call from their level 2 support them , hope they can escalate it and fix it up.

So , if you're like me. Call up and hopefully they can get it forwarded and fixed as soon as possible. I am waiting for the call from ASTRO. I'll keep you guys updated. Dont worry , it has happened to me a lot of times with TM and in fact other companies. So I am pretty used to it !

Okay tomorrow they'll be coming around 11 am. So I'll ping. I contacted Astro today and I said please give me an installer asap.

Anyway 1080i would give you full HD , as your tv would deinterlace it causing it to be 1080p. So its kinda pixel perfect , however it would have some blurriness

Still waiting for the installer to show up , he said 11 AM and now its 11.24 AM and yet I am still waiting for him.

Just got it installed today. The installer guy was kinda nice he sticked his contact number in my setup box. Pretty neat eh. I'll upload the pictures later. So finally I got mine installed Today

SD channels - they still suck

HD channels - can't really notice the difference between 1080i output/720p output. Currently I am using 720p (recommended for HD Ready TVs) and 1080i (for full HD TVs). As its able to de interlace properly. The PQ looks superb. I've to admit , I am stunned

The setup box is pretty small compared to my old Nokia. They did change the wire even though its the same type.

If anyone wants to know how I got it installed (registered on 12th , 13th first call and 14th the second and today 23rd I got it installed)

Yep , I am going to do that with my PC. So my PC would be another "TV". I was told its possible. Going to do that later
Setapak (Kuala Lumpur)


Oh yeah some more good news :-

1. The system runs Linux. Yes , it uses Linux. It has OpenSSH installed (allows you to remotely control the box and run lots of stuff. Yep , its a full blown Linux box - those who are into hacking , would know this)

2. HDMI is v1.3 compliant , even if you have HDMI 1.0 , it would still work. you'll get HD output and HD streams are HDCP. So meaning that they will only work if its done via HDMI

3. The decoder is locked (thanks to Linux and SHA-1 encryption) to the Smart Card. you can't swap the smart cards with your friends , like last time it was possible to swap smart cards (i.e if your mate has package c and hes out of town and he gives you his smart card. You can use that and view whatever channel he has). Now the decoder is smart , it knows its Smart Card. Again we can reset this stuff , if we know the root password

4. The USB port at the back is a USB Host and not a Client port. So meaning that we can link it to a PC and I bet its used for something or troubleshooting. I am not sure about this.

5. The LAN is 10/100 and not 1000Mbps

Thats all for now. I'll be doing some more paperwork/research alter and let you guys know about it

Will do that later

Great

Yes , you can if you want to. But just curious does that monitor support HD outputs such as 720p/1080i. If it supports 720p , then yes. The decoder cant output at 1080p , it can only do at 1080i , however the TV will automagically deinterlace it and will be 1080p. It depends if the monitor can support

From what I see , yes its capable of playing rmvb , divx (avi) files and as well as MP3 and as well as DTS encoded audio files. The processor is powerful enough to do so. I am quite sure it can play blu-ray rips via USB too. It depends all on ASTRO if they enable us to plug in our pen drive and turn it into media player

Okay those who are still with SD TV , one word. Just forget it. If your main TV is SD. Just forget it. HD channels still look like SD and you're going to see 16:9 in 4:3 format which sucks. So my recommendation is to get a HDTV first and go

As for 1080i vs 720p. I just prefer to go with 720p as thats why my TV prefers

HD Ready - generally these HDTVs are cheap. It can support only 720p and 1080i. It can't support 1080p - The screen size is generally 1366x768
Full HD - You'll see the Full HD 1080p logo or certified 1080p HD logo . It can support 720p/1080i/1080p. The screen size is generally 1920x1080

Astro works on both HD Ready and full HD. Im using a HD Ready TV myself and it works great

Is it me , or is the audio coming out from Centre only and left and right and back speakers are bit soft or way to soft.

I am thinking of falling back to 2.0 instead of 5.1 !

Read the previous post

You add RM 20 to get HD versions of the channels that you're currently paying for. Suppose if you have sports package , the RM 20 package will give you HD versions of Sports Channels , same applies to movie and learning package. If you don't have any of those packages subscribed then you dont get the HD version. Its simple as that

So if you have sports + Movies + learning , just add RM 20 extra and you have HD versions of it. If you have sports only , add RM 20 and you get ESPN in HD and supersports in HD

This post has been edited by prasys: Dec 23 2009, 09:11 PM

Since I am not the only one. I'll be giving them a call tomorrow and going to complain about Audio

Going back with 2.1 now and not going to use HT speakers , it sucks. The delay makes me crazy , everything is mixed and its pure gay. The video rocks , but the audio sucks now. Arghhhhh

Yeah it was me who LAN'ed and SSHed. Bad news is that I turned off the decoder just now. Poof auto-update and poof its blocked. Argh , I guess Astro spies are reading this topic.

They have fixed the loophole

Take a picture of HD and SD , show it to your parents. Make them to understand what is HD and SD. Then they will know or ask them to go to showroom and see the quality comparison.

The problem with hacking ASTRO is that , its hard. You can hack , it will work till you shut it off and let it to get any new updates. Poof it gets updates automagically and updates/patches things/reverts to stock back. If you disable that , it pretty much renders the decoder useless !