LOL. Yeah everyone get the same deal. You may have misread my statement. It's just my wish that Astro should consider their loyal subscribers.

Oh yeah, I just got a call from Astro marketing that Astro installer will call me for appointment within 10 working days from today, pretty fast from my first call this morning.

Hrm... I dont know about you, but I really dislike NTSC 480i shows being converted to 576i.

There are 2 kinds of conversion done.

One is the easy way which is from 29.97fps directly to 25fps... which causes terrible jerkiness in the motion of the video. This is the worst kind of scenario I usually face. Because if you deinterlace the video, no matter its odd field or even field... it will cause jerkiness to the motion. If you use field blending method, it causes ghosting effect, which makes it bad. This kind of conversion is often done to music videos channel. If that music video is really rare and I cant find it elsewhere, I had to stick with it, encoding it in interlaced mode as to keep those lines, let the tv bob deinterlace it... cause only this way the motion stays the best while not causing the ghosting effect.

The other way is kinda long winded, the 29.97fps shows were inverse telecined to 23.97fps and then only fasten by 4% to 25fps. This is commonly done in those US series and you can notice those shows are fully progressive when viewed using a tv card, rtm and other channels in PAL asia countries does the same thing. This method is really good for me, because the main point is keeping those video frame progressive, yeah the audio is off a little faster but i'm still cool with it. For example, Madonna's music video "Celebration" were done this way, so as Paramore's "Decode". Was really surprised to see such thing here because its a very rare case. Usually most music videos were done using the method above.


But have you ever play with a PAL 576i shows converted to NTSC 480i?

Of course this would be bad too but when you deinterlace the video, the motion stays smooth...thats the beauty of it. Choose odd or even field deinterlace, you don't get the jerky crap as of the above situation. Its really funny how this works, but yeah this is what I've noticed playing with it. Not that i support such scenario.

In fact, I'd rather prefer if they broadcast both NTSC and PAL together lol...though it will be annoying to see ure tv gone blank for a while changing to NTSC format when the NTSC video is being broadcasted etc haha.. Keep the original format as it is. Broadcast as it is, instead of convert this n that....really degrades the video quality by doing so. But since HD is the same resolution already, they should maybe get unified and stick with one fps to standardize the whole thing instead of converting here and there.

This post has been edited by kaspersky-fan: Jan 2 2010, 05:15 PM

1 question:

If i pay RM20, do i get all the 5 channels?

In the future, if astro add some more HD channels, do i have to pay more?

First question: It depends on your subscribed package, i.e. Sport - you get sport HD, Movie - you get movie HD, etc.

Second question: I asked the same question to CS, no one can tell at the moment.

I've asked the 2nd q before, they told me depends on astro's future management. So... you got what that means right? There is a high possible chance they will increase the fee lol

---

Added on January 2, 2010, 5:42 pmwoohoooo the installer just called! My astro byond coming tomorrow =) ...feeling excited now ^^

This post has been edited by kaspersky-fan: Jan 2 2010, 05:42 PM

That's a good news, so nice. How long did you wait between the call from Astro marketing?

Call from Astro marketing was fast...within days.... but waiting for installer to come was long =__=... 15th dec till now... bleh!

Actually, compared to native 576i shows (studio news, local/HK/Singapore series, etc), those US shows converted from 480i still sucks big time, but there's not much we can do as an end user (except complaint of course). Yes, I have seen plenty of 480i music videos ripped in a 576i country, some have ghosting effect, others are just plain jerky, while the good ones must be the ones that have gone through the inverse telecine method. But, when converting from 23.97fps to 25fps, can they repeat a frame every 24th frame to avoid speeding up the video? There will be some jerkiness, but at least the audio note won't change. If I'm not wrong, speeding up the audio will entail reencoding/resampling the audio again as the sampling rate of 48kHz must be maintained, of course audio resampling is less processor intensive than video processing.

The closest I have for a 576i converted to 480i is a F1 race telecast that I missed and had to grab it from somewhere, my HTPC was set to 1080p60, but the movement is still not smooth either, very annoying, must be my HTPC. I should have tried setting the output to 1080p50 but I forgot.

Well, the world is never ever unified... but we're getting there, very slowly... the frame rates are still not the same and will remain that way for quite some time.

I would say repeating a frame on every 24th frame will cause massive jerkiness because its 25fps...every second you will see the video got "stuck" a bit lol. I remembered playing with the audio. There is a way to maintain the note of the vocals, but the tempo would be faster etc... cant really recall but cool edit pro can do such fix... just that the end product from cool edit pro isnt that nice... if they were using some more precise hardware based encoder it should be fine because i couldnt notice much difference between those 2 converted and non converted audio tone but the tempo yes, beats a lil faster when compared together, if you casually stumbled upon the video... i cant really tell the diff.

As for live telecast ... I cant comment much because I never really played with those video. But since it is recorded live, most of the time it will be interlaced without doubt for SD except for some rare occasions like one of the mtv ema awards...cant recall which year.... it was fully progressive shown in mtvasia over here.... that really shocked me too lol

1.apexg2
2.kelvin (Penang)
3.torreto (Subang Jaya/Kelantan)
4. rayfoo
5.l_berd (Penang)
6.RAMChYLD (Klang)
7 Cyberian (Sepang)
8. azri (U5, Shah Alam)
9. teikwing (Taiping, Perak)
10. AjKR06 (Bgn Serai, Perak)
11. horray (Petaling Jaya, Selangor)
12. LCP (Penang)
13. pknride (pekan,pahang)
14. dsubra (Klang)
15. tHeRiDdLeR (Serdang, Selangor)
16. economist (PJ,Sgor)
17. honamd77(Kuantan,Pahang)
18. zwanvedder(meru, setia alam)
19. ape (Shah Alam)
20. Iman210 (Pinggiran USJ, Subang Jaya)
21. kuekss (Sunway SPK Damansara,KL)
22. crossmaniac (saujana utama sg buloh)
23. ssyam ( dungun, Terengganu )
24. edthrax (ttdi, KL)
25. twL (Klang)
26. maja_5365(Nilai)
27. pirateguy
28. stimix
29. tailesley (Bukit Jalil)
30. suffeylp (Shah Alam)
31. sun_flower5 (Cheras,Selangor)
32. wcloh111 (Bkt. Mertajam, Penang)
33. seed80 (Seremban)[/spoiler]
34. allenultra (Gunung Rapat, Ipoh, Perak)
35. yanhui95 (Petaling Jaya, Selangor)
36.ScienceFreak (Gombak)
37. low98944 (Kuching, Sarawak)
38. R.ap7or (Penang)
39. Ares187 ( Pandan Indah )
40. darenlks (Cheras, Selangor)
41. Putih (USJ, Selangor)
42. anfieldude (Penang)
43. Donald G.H Tan (Klang)
44. rhemo (Kuching,Sarawak)
45. mlthum (Puchong, Selangor)
46. hoffmeister (Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor)
47. yonggoh (Kuching, Sarawak)
48. tchwang (Hijauan Residence, Cheras Selangor) Installation Date: 23/12/09

still no news from astro sabah yet, oh mai, are we being left out here?? damn jeles haha

Hahaha. Ur location?

Hartamas, KL.....

my fren call astro monday morning..astro call him monday afternoon.
thursday installer call and tadaaa..can wath beyond

demm..how fast.take 4 day to complete.me almost 2 week

me oso... my brother call astro tuesday morning... astro call wednesday afternoon..
yesterday installer call 2.30pm and... happy new year wit astro HD

I registered online. 24 hrs already but no T&C call. Should I call them instead? Or will they definitely call after we registered online?

Mine call in for register.. no one call after 24.. At night register again online.. the next morning astro call for confirmation..

no harm to re-register through call-in.. At least one of then will works.

Got my astro within 3 days after they call me for confirmation..

This post has been edited by aneip: Jan 2 2010, 07:44 PM

Called Astro CS just now to register again. Was informed that Byond's marketing team will only probably call me on Monday, since they are on holiday till Sunday. Haiyah!

Having used Sky, DirectTV, FoxTel and many other decoders, NONE of them switch the output to the TV. In ALL cases the decoder is set to one resolution and the chips in the box do the conversion.

One of the biggest criticisms of Digital TV in the early days was channel surf times, the delay between switching channels. If the TV switched modes then this would be worse! Hence the fixed mode output.


Typically, channel surf times become less of an issue as people start using the EPG to find programs, rather than channel surf. Now that Astro B.yond has a decent EPG we should stop being a nation of surfers and become searchers!

everyone here is getting the same deal...free until april
i'm also a subscriber from 1998 as well....