Hi, been a lurker for years, my first post... Can someone confirm that the new cable between the dish and decoder is still RG-6 type of cable?

Still waiting for the installer here in Penang, it's been 4 days since the T&C briefing call.

On the S-video question posed by someone, from the picture of the rear section of the decoder (on the facebook link posted by someone else earlier), only the following connections are available:

- Composite video (lowest analogue video quality, SD only)
- Component video (best analogue video quality, generally up to 1080i, but requires 3 RCA cables)
- Analogue audio (L & R RCAs)
- Digital audio (S/PDIF coax via RCA)
- HDMI port
- One USB port at the rear (another USB port in front) (which means it will use a USB HDD or USB Flash Drives for future recording capability)
- RJ45 network port
- F connector for signal from dish
- DC power supply connector

As S-Video connector is going the way of the dinosaur, the best bet is component video if HDMI is not convenient. Most TVs have component video inputs, and picture quality is better than S-Video. The major issue is component video needs 3 cables alone excluding audio.

My plan is to primarily use HDMI for Astro B.yond, connected to my Yamaha RX-V1900. But when watching regular SD channels and if the SD channels are not upscaled to my liking via the decoder HDMI, I will also leave a set of component video cables connected to the Yamaha as the RX-V1900 does a good job of upscaling/enhancing analogue SD videos (it will just pass through any HDMI video signal without further processing).

My current SD Astro set-up has the S-Video output connected to the Yamaha where the upscaling from 576i to 1080p is done, pretty satisfied with the result when compared to directly connecting the Astro S-Video to my TV. This Yamaha uses Anchor Bay Technology VRS video scaler chip, just the lower end chip but good enough.

Agreed, years ago, I had to personally stand beside the installer when he was aligning my dish and I insisted that he does it thoroughly. I don't have much problem with rain fade except during the heaviest rain or the biggest blackest baddest cloud is in the way...

So, how do we ensure that the installer are doing a good job in aligning the dishes, especially now that they know the new dish can easily give out higher signal amplitude? They just align it "roughly", couldn't be careless. Their lackadaisical attitude has to go...

This post has been edited by LCP: Dec 21 2009, 03:35 PM

My Yamaha RX-V1900 AVR is doing exactly just that for SD analogue video to go from 576i to 1080p... complete picture sometimes with funny blinking/moving white dots on top of the picture on certain channels. And can really see a lot more at the edges, things that you thought are already cropped out on normal TVs.

And I only watch 4:3 SD with two black vertical bars at the side so I don't get squashed picture, many of my friends called me crazy fella saying that I am wasting the available (and expensive) screen areas on my TV... sigh... (I'd rather see the black bars than distorted human bodies... )

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Added on December 21, 2009, 3:18 pmAm from Penang too, still waiting, today's the 5th day already since the T&C call...

This post has been edited by LCP: Dec 21 2009, 03:18 PM

The customer service lady told me 10 days, inclusive of weekends and public holidays...

Actually there is nothing wrong with 1080i broadcast as most TVs are now able to do a very good job of deinterlacing. For the same bandwidth as (possibly even slightly less than) 720p, I think getting the full 1920x1080 resolution is worthwhile, for now. I was actually a bit dismayed when early press reports mentioned that Astro HD will only be available in 720p (when most others are doing 1080i), but the recent reports just before the launch cleared things up...

The photos of the Byond decoder (from someone's facebook link) has less buttons at the front fascia than the Pace DS-830, and also the button design is different, you very sure it's the Pace DS-830?

All the DS-830 variants look like the DS-830... here:
http://www.pace.com/corporate/products/pro...m&prodType=DSAT

For those in Penang, a friend of mine (Gelugor) also had his installed just now, needed to change cable due to poor signal, but all done in an hour. So, looks like they only started today... still waiting for mine...

Could it be that Astro has two decoder suppliers also for Byond, just like the Philips and Nokia sets from 10 years ago?

Thanks for the confirmation... so it's a customised version, no wonder doesn't look like the original DS830...

In terms of rising quality:
Composite < S-Video < Component

Component connection is the best available for analogue video signal, only problem is 3 cables are required.

Btw, has anyone tried whether this set can output 720p and/or 1080i via the component output or did Astro restrict the hardware/firmware to only standard definition PAL 576i on the component output?

From the way things are going, expect a number of firmware upgrades (via the usual update downloads in the middle of the night?) in the first few months to resolve all the strange issues.

Belden = brand
Holland = country

My RM0.02 guess:
Venlo = town where the company is located
H125 = the cable type

Is there any other wordings stating that it's RG6/U compliant, etc.?

Mine is the original one that came with the Nokia DVB8750S decoder set, the (possibly cheapo) cable has these words printed:

Nokia/Astro type SAT19B RG-6F compliant, gas injected

There's also a "25m" printed there, must be the length the cable was available in.

No idea what da heck is RG-6F, I only know RG6/U standards... and no idea what's "gas injected" also, cheaper cables always have some marketing gimmick wordings... Just hope that this works for Byond so don't hafta wire right across my apartment, all over the walls. My existing cable was nicely embedded in the wall during renovation.

Just a thought...

Actually, what would be a convenient feature to have on this decoder is to be able to play back regular (unencrypted) HD video files with MPEG2 or AVC/H.264 encoding using a USB flash drive or USB HDD stuck to the decoder's USB port. Of course the decoder must be flexible enough to be able to decode from many different type of file containers, eg. .mkv, .ts, .mp4, .mpg, etc...

In other words, this can also double up as a high def media player although I don't expect it to be as flexible as WD TV, AC Ryan PlayOnHD, etc...

Think of it this way, the decoder already has the capability to decode MPEG2 and H.264 encodings, technically it just needs a firmware that will instruct it to play files with such encodings.

Also, from what I understand, in future, when Astro enables the recording feature via the USB port to USB HDDs or flash drives, the files will remain encrypted and cannot be played anywhere else... not sure whether it can be played back on another Byond set with a different smartcard. The question remains is will Astro charge for this recording capability...

This post has been edited by LCP: Dec 22 2009, 10:49 PM

Good info there, thanks!

So, if this box can be hacked to play regular unencrypted video files, it will double up as a media player also... no need to spend extra $$$ for those media player boxes, well, this is if there's no HTPC to begin with...

I think it's a built-in failsafe procedure to check whether the firmware has a different checksum from the legit one on each boot up. If the checksum is different, it will force a refresh by downloading the firmware again

Aw man, why can't Astro make the output resolution a dynamic feature, to follow the resolution of the source channel...

Looks like, when I am watching SD channels, I might wanna use the component output to my Yamaha RX-V1900 and let it do the digitizing and upscale to 1080p... reasonably good scalar chip in my Yammy...

Will get mine this afternoon (location: Penang), the installer called my house fixed line number and no one was around yesterday... Astro didn't even give him my mobile number (even though the Cust Service took down my mobile number), I guess this is better than someone who had an installer showed up without calling. Luckily am on leave and at home when the installer called again today.

By the way, speaking of activation, I called Astro customer service last night to check on the status, and the lady said my Byond card had been activated on Mon 21 Dec... and just wait for the installer to call... Damn, does that mean that the installer has been using my set to demo and try out... and the 4 days of free HBO HD will be gone soon after I get mine installed this afternoon... I don't have the movie package.

Apparently the customer service lady gave me the wrong info (looks like they are a very confused bunch ), my card hasn't been activated yet, the 21 Dec date is the issuance of the card I guess. The installer came this afternoon and activated it by calling some numbers where he had to key in his installer ID.

So, I have no idea whether the old card on the SD set still works after the activation of the new card because I surrendered my old set already.

Let's talk about alignment and signal strength for a while...

Mine used an equipment with an analogue (needle pointer) meter, that also whistles, the stronger the signal the higher pitch the whistle gets... And my installer looks like he's over 60 years old, hopefully he can still hear the high pitch sound, I was actually concerned he'll fall off my bedroom balcony while fixing the dish which is quite a stretch to reach...

After aligning the dish, unfortunately because of the long reach required, he can't disconnect the cable to his meter and reconnect my cable without having to turn the dish, so I think he made a mark on the metal structure so that the dish can be turned back to the aligned position after reconnecting my cable...

Attached image below is the signal strength I got... I understand that the right bar (signal quality) must always be at 100% or 0.0e-7 BER (bit error rate). As for the bar on the left, the signal number is at the bottom, in my case, it's always fluctuating between these two numbers 201 and 198, but sometimes can see a 206. So, at 201, it should be at the 21st bar (of total 28 bars in the graph), which is the bar below 80%... sorry my old camera colour rendition is a bit bad.

Well, I found a surprising thing, when the signal sometimes momentarily hits 206, the familiar "toot toot" sound is heard (although the "toot" is lower frequency than on the old Nokia/Philips set), no sound at 201, does this means that my signal level is still below the optimised level (when at 198-201)?

So, what are you fellas getting for the signal level? Any consistent "toot toot" sound like the old set?

My location is southern part of Penang island, if you look at the map showing the turtle-like shape of Penang island, I am right at the a$$ of the turtle, right in the middle where the missing tail is... Understand that the signal strength of Measat 3/3A is just a little bit lower in Penang when compared to central region, this is based on Measat website footprint graph.



This post has been edited by LCP: Dec 24 2009, 08:36 PM