F1 yesterday picture quality is better than they air it last 2 weeks...anyone noticed this yesterday?

if i'm not mistaken i heard/read our local channels will be in HD in 2013.... walla 3 years to go... but still, for malay drama??? do u think the small production co will upgrade their equipment? hurmmm....

in 3 years, HD equipment will be standard..so, the price will drop for sure

they have to make it HD coz after 2015, there are most of the film in HD...so, they have to follow the standard if they want their film in the market..

There are lots of ways for them to cheat and they probably will because Astro / Media Prima have done nothing but shrink the budgets available to produciton houses every year.

But if they want to produce HD they need to do the following:


For Video - >

Malay dramas are slowly switching to HD shooting already. But of course these new cameras have higher rental fees. $$$

They are editing with an intermediate file that's between SD and HD resolution.

And then outputting to SD for delivery.

To upgrade, the production houses will need more expensive editing computers and spend a lot more time rendering than they do now. This costs more money$$$ than usual.

They will also need to output to HDCam tape, this transfer process costs more money than the current process.$$$


For Audio - >

Some malay dramas don't even take their audio to an audio-post production house to finish their audio.

To get 5.1 surround, they will either fake it. Or they will take their audio to an audio-post production house, which has to take more time in mixing / editing. This costs more money$$$ than usual.

Then the audio needs to be encoded to Dolby E. Not even the multi-million dollar facility at FINAS can do this. Currently the only way to encode audio to Dolby E is to take it down to MediaCorp in Singapore. This of course costs more money$$$



So if Media Prima / Astro go Full HD, not only will they have to upgrade their own facilities, they will have to increase the budgets that they give production houses.

No offences, HD has been there in the market ever since 2005 end , begining 2006. I watched Skysports in HD back in London somewhere in 2006.

That took ASTRO nearly 4 utter years to bring in HD.

For what it's worth, Astro actually made the right choice to wait it out. In 2006, DVB-S2 was still in draft and HD was done using MPEG-2 over DVB-S which is bandwidth intensive. If Astro had went HD then, they'd have to upgrade again when DVB-S2 and H.264 went final last year. Plus, they also waited for MEASAT-3A to launch first instead of shoehorning the already crowded MEASAT-3. They won't be able to offer more than two HD channels if they use DVB-S and MPEG-2 over MEASAT-3.

Although I'm pretty confused on why Astro only use one satellite for SD and another for HD? Why not let both Measat 2 and 3 carry SD, and let 3A carry more SD channels as well as HD? That's what DishTV and DirecTV do in the US to be able to offer hundreds of channels. For example, use Measat 2 for AOD content, 3 for specific packages and 3A for HD and more specific packages? Then you'll have room for hundreds of channels.

Although, in the US, they have a pretty funny looking antenna called a "SuperDish" when they need to receive from 4 different satellites...

This post has been edited by RAMChYLD: Mar 29 2010, 03:22 PM

owh, B.yond reach v4.0 already..
got the byond already. but the sound at astro still not funtional is it?'

That's not a bad idea...

This post has been edited by stasio: Mar 29 2010, 03:44 PM

Probably 2 satellites for 2 different broadcasting. SD & HD.
I guess the plan is to persuade Malaysians to upgrade to Astro Beyond fully, then they might have one Satellites

what do you mean? you got no sound?

are you connected properly or not?

Astro has to choose between:

1. Launch a new satellite.
2. Change all SD channels encoding to H.264 and possibly change all decoders.

astro dish is more capable, it can receive 2 satelites signal with sigle lnb

I think he means the Volume button?
It works ..or you meant something else?

about sound issue, I think digital sound can not be adjusted, but analogue sound can, by using byond remote control

This post has been edited by neb: Mar 29 2010, 04:01 PM

i think this issue have been discuss...please refer back dated post...

When upgrading to astro beyond, can i refuse to give the old smart card ? because every time i go back to my grandmother's house i will take the card to watch my subscribed channel at there and will the card work after i upgrade to astro beyond? thx

must give back

ASTRO will not possibly allow 2 working smart cards for one account. You have to give up either one bro.