woh new thread!!! =P

mai new thread lor... its a separate thread to continue v1 ma =P

since when cheras is in selangor? lol...unless he is saying he got 2 places both cheras and selangor also pasang byond haha

just call astro cs and goreng them with the word "MCMC or SKMM"....they will speed up ure process... after i did that, within 2 days i got the installer's detail via sms...and able to made appointment with them...go try it

---

Added on January 1, 2010, 11:16 amoo never heard of that lol...somehow everyone keeps telling me cheras is in kl etc... now that clears up the air, thanks for explaining

This post has been edited by kaspersky-fan: Jan 1 2010, 11:16 AM

this is good news for me... then i dont need to configure the decoder remote to work with the tv.... my dad always uses the astro's volume remote while my grandma always uses the tv's volume remote.... and quite often i see the tv's volume is 99 (max volume level).... thansk to dad making it so damn soft in the astro's volume remote.....causing my grandma to keep maximizing the tv's volume level

from what you guys say...i have a feeling all hd channels are broadcasted 1080i.... because if u feel that the pic is a lil blur...it might be due to decoder resizing to 720p and deinterlace it.... then when it comes to tv...it tries to stretch it back to 1080p (if ure tv is full hd...) Even if ure tv isnt full hd, the more reason to believe its 1080i source due to the resizing to 720p and deinterlacing alone...

i have played some 720p (native) sources on my panny before and i dont notice such blurring effect.... infact its very real...like ure tv is the window to the concert lol (sharp and smooth motion)

So you are saying... if the decoder is tuned to one channel, upstairs will also be the same channel? if yes maybe u can buy the component cable or composite cable and plug to ure upstairs tv and use the hdmi downstairs

I'm just wondering, why ASTRO's new decoder didnt have a setting to output default resolutions as it is broadcasted? For example if the channel is 576i, then just output that, etc... instead of forcing us to choose 720p or 1080i... I understand this option allows hd ready tv to be viewed, but if only they could include another option with "Broadcasted resolution".

Another fear I have in mind is... how does the decoder work? Lets say you set your output resolution choice of 720p. Does the decoder continues to resize again 720p broadcasted video to 720p and perform deinterlacing or it will intelligently know "ah this video stream is 720p, no need resize and deinterlace, just output the video stream straight away". I'm sure the decoder would do that to non 720p video stream, like if it seems 1080i stream, it will do the resize and deinterlacing. I just want to know if this decoder is smart.

Same goes to 1080i setting. If you set 1080i resolution, what will it do? Will it perform resize and frame interpolation to video streams broadcasted in 1080i? Or it is smart enough to know ok its the same resolution, just output it to the tv?

And I'm also afraid that does the decoder adds noise reduction to those standard definition channel? Im very sure if they need to resize SD channels to 1080i, noise reduction + smoothing effect would be needed to ensure the picture quality stays satisfying, hence they claimed that the SD channels are "enhanced".

Why do i fear all these?

I have a feeling one day recording via hdmi would be possible by bypassing hdcp protocols since it has know to have some serious flaws. And if that day comes, we would still not be recording pure digital video stream out of the hdmi since the decoder has adjusted something to the streams.

what about plugging in the ethernet cable? lol... i would want to try it out once i get mine =P

Har? If astro does allow that option, I'd rather not select it.... because there goes all the progressive frames if you choose 1080i60 since it will definitely be interpolated... and the fact that we are in PAL region.... videos that are PAL native which could be progressive frames extractable be ruined by the interpolation....

Yes astro transmits 1080i only... not P..but in those 1080i frames, there could be progressive too, especially HBO HD. Most films are shot in 24fps, but when it comes to PAL region, it will be faster 4% to 25fps (this goes the same to PAL dvd's...the movies are 4% faster in speed...thus the run length time is shorter).... and if you notice astro's SD channels, like hbo... they tend to be progressive frames even though it was broadcasted in 25i... you wont see interlacing lines on the movie itself, but maybe on those hbo's own animated logo like "you are now watching xxxx"

so I'm very sure most...not all of HBO HD movies broadcasted could be progressive frames too but in interlaced transmission lol... (actually i dont know how to explain it well all these term, all i know is when you put those video inside TMPGENC and select the correct field order and frame...walla all progressive frames, no deinterlacing required...thats what I did with my recorded medias =P and of course it really depends on the show. If you are talking about concerts...then the chances are very little, but if u are talking about EU/PAL region shot music video, US series, yeah they are mostly seen to be progressive in mtv/[v]/star world )

This post has been edited by kaspersky-fan: Jan 2 2010, 01:00 PM

Exactly my thoughts when i first read that post.... its digital signal... no way in hell it will improve the PQ ..its either got picture or no picture... =__=... so those watever expensive monster cables for hdmi is just monster in price but still the same thing with a brandless hdmi cable for rm20....

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

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

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

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

Hartamas, KL.....

those who moved on with S2, they are most likely using H264 compression. Since you said fashiontv is 7+Mbps...perhaps is S2 system with h264...astro is using s2 with h264 too, hence with the 8Mbps rate. Those 17-18Mbps ones uve mentioned seems to be mpeg-2...still s1 system perhaps?.... but 17-18Mbps mpeg-2 is almost similar to 8-9Mbps h264..... now if u found a channel using h264 at 17-18Mbps...then thats high quality =P

nah you can believe that because there are 2 types of dvd, PAL and NTSC region. NTSC region dvds are 480...PAL dvds are 576....since we are in PAL region, astro is using 576 indeed

oops, right...almost forgot the hd channels were mixed in the same transponders as sd... but i beg to differ with the bandwidth thing, if no one complains im very sure they will maintain it for the time being and slowly decrease the bitrate as more channels are added in...just like what happened to those sd channels. lets just enjoy the good quality while it lasts...