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 !

The fact that almost no sport channels outside US uses 720p also remains. If you know of any, can you tell me the channel name and the transponder too? I actually tried to find 720p sport channels outside America and didn't find any. What I have found is that National Geographic HD is 720p across the world. Considering that 1080i and 720p has similar bandwidth consumption, why on earth Sky and ESPN records Premiership matches with 1080i? Especially when almost all HDTVs are progressive?

It is all good on paper, 720p being superior than 1080i, but in the real world 1080i trumps 720p in most cases when it comes to fast-paced scenes.

If Astro decides to use 720p, it better be 720p50 instead of the film-like 720p24. If Astro use the latter, they are totally insane. If you think poor deinterlacer in HDTVs are bad enough, wait until judder problems rears its head with 720p24. It can actually make people sick, and that's why it is rare for any company to broadcast with 720p24.

When we had only astro sd, which was crap on lcd and plasma TVs, everyone wanted hdtv so we could actually realise our investment on the expensive TVs.
Now we're getting HDTV, and some are b****ing it being 1080i instead of 720p. In real world perception, there is really not much difference, as those of us who watch 720p and 1080i videos will tell you. The world standard is generally 1080i, so that must be pretty acceptable to the vast majority of HDTV viewers worldwide.
So, can we at least wait until we actually get to watch Astro Byond (not the trial broadcasts) before we go into this debate? And we don't really have any choice anyway, except only to subscribe or not!

A quick question for those who has the decoder and hooked up to an AV Amp, how is the audio quality fairs? Esp by connecting it via the Digital CoAxial?

I listen quite a fair bit of the astro radio channel actually. The original Astro decoder serve very poor quality audio. It has very little dynamics. I hope this is not due to me connecting it to the Condo shared connector though.

But how is this new one? Does the movie comes with Dolby Digital signal or DTS? Thanks.

hey, astro b.yond got 1 tuner or 2 tuner?
because astro max got 2 tuner right?
we can record 1 channel while watching other channel?

how abt b.yond

Sigh... the FAQ must actually be broken!

Many HDTVs sold in Malaysia has below-par deinterlacers. In those TV set, the difference between 720p and 1080i will be noticeable. You may also notice that your expensive TV is actually not that good.

This is where we come to the concept of "sphere of influence" vs "sphere of concern". Influence is deciding to subscribe or not, or changing the LCD TV if we find 1080i not so palatable. Concern is whether it is broadcast as 720p or 1080i, i.e. we care but can do squat about it!

How could you tell if the hdtv couldnt deinterlace properly?

With some basic research and asking around, you should have the general idea what broadcast system each channel will use (hint: just check what broadcast system those channels used in neighboring countries - as for Supersport HD, that's a no-brainer), so therefore debating between the merits of 720p and 1080i is pretty much acceptable for me now.

And I have to reiterate the fact that with many HDTVs in Malaysia has below par deinterlacers, the difference between 720p and 1080i will be noticeable. And that's an important context.

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Added on December 18, 2009, 12:05 amInterlacing artifacts will be seen in TV.

It is possible that the new decoder has its own deinterlacers though (like Sky HD STB). If that's the case, then there should be less problems.

This post has been edited by asellus: Dec 18 2009, 12:05 AM

Easy to spot. Just watch at close range for the images to distort. The effect should look like this:

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Added on December 18, 2009, 1:03 amThat is still debatable. Just because ESPN UK uses 1080i doesn't mean the whole world will follow suit. It could be different from country to country, depending on the broadcaster. I got info (but not sure how accurate) from wikipedia about ESPN HD in Australia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN_Australia

Another one, read up about the ESPN HD.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/01/foxtels_...wn_around_room/

So, I think its wrong to say there are no sport channels outside US that uses 720p.

By the way Sky TV HD also supports 720p, not just 1080i. This is according to their website:

http://packages.sky.com/hd/faqs/


Who knows, it could be Sky prefer picture quality over better frame rates? But if 1080i is better, why would ESPN HD in US go for 720p instead of 1080i? So even that is debatable.

How is it 1080i trumps 720p for face-paced scenes? Can you provide me any evidence of such statement because I haven't found any website that supports the idea that 1080i is great for fast-paced scenes.


This post has been edited by pirateguy: Dec 18 2009, 01:03 AM

ah those....didnt really seen such with my panny plasma =)

ESPN HD in Australia is basically the same as ESPN HD US, therefore it is not surprising that it also uses 720p. It wasn't surprising really, as you can see Derek Rae and Tommy Smyth on that channel. The ESPN in SEA is heavily customized (that's why we don't see Tommy Smyth here, but we can see the likes of John Dykes and co. instead).

Sky TV supports 720p on STB level, not on broadcast level. Meaning, viewers who wants to see Chelsea vs Arsenal in 720p in Sky Sport HD will set it in their STB and the STB will convert it to their preferences. Still broadcasted in 1080i though.

If you hang around in internet forums that specialized in broadcasting, home theaters etc. it is accepted that 1080i is preferred than 720p for sports. For example, NBA in CBS looks better than in FOX because it looks sharper, although of course some people disputes this. The whitepapers may say that 720p is better for sports, but in the real world, 1080i trumped 720p when it comes to performance at the same bitrates, according to viewers feedback. The larger number of HD sport channels that uses 1080i compared to those with 720p confirms that.

If 720p is so good for sport channels (or movies etc.), why wasn't it was used then? If the broadcasters uses 720p for HD sport broadcasts, they can actually also simulcast the SD version of the said channel simultaneously on the same spectrum, which will allow them to wring more profits.

It doesn't matter what sort of ESPN source Australia gets, at the end of the day 720p sport broadcasting do exist outside of US.

Then the 720p from Sky suffers loss of framerates since the source is from a 1080i.


Like I said before, please provide me links. I already checked forums on 720p vs 1080i debate and it all comes down to the same conclusion that sport = 720p, movies = 1080i.

Anyone know Astro B.yond use which Measat ?? if use difference from what Astro SD use, then this will explain why we need to change the disc.

who install the astro b.yond dy???

Same old Mesat3.

eh i thought is measat 3A

Possible too! but having 2 birds at same location beaming strong signal over our house should be interesting

at the end of the day.. depends on the actual HD cameras used, if it's 1080i camera, can be converted to 720p also for the broadcast format.. then it's not really true 720p source for that material so maybe then 720p of that footage may not represent true 720p.


and also depends on your TV, if it can de-interlace 1080i properly, then (as my order of preference anyway) 1080i is still better than 720p. the logic is that 1080i has all the spatial details to make 1920x1080p (i.e. two 1080i frames can be used to build 1920x1080 frame properly if still or slow moving image) but loss at the time detail (movement between frames, i.e. fast moving frames).. but most TVs are pretty good at de-interlacing anyway hence why we rarely see "haircomb" effect as the picture shown above by pirateguy.. but that means loss of detail at the edges of fast moving objects... so maybe 20-30% loss of details compared to 1080p image (if fast moving video), but on stationary image then 1080i = 1080p.. you can fully reconstruct 1080i to 1080p (at half refresh rate)

for 720p.. well it's still 1 million pixel short of 1080p or 1080i for that matter.. and many pixel interpolation engine (using 720p signal) is still not as good to "guess" how the extra 1million pixels should be on a 1080p TV... so loss of detail at every frame..
50% loss of details compared to 1080p image..