http://advanced-television.com/index.php/2...1-in-satellite/

lol Measat loses to Thaicom, even though Measat fleet have more HD channels.

Because Thaicom also service Satellite Internet (IPStar). Measat...

Thanks for the reply.
Do you mind to tell what is the different between

Fit to screen.
pillar box
LB expand

Thank you

International level no standard,boast locally yes!Ass can only make it in Msia,thats proven!

When you first asked about which to select for "Conversion for 4:3 Input video", I already guessed that you will also ask about the difference.

The old TV display standard is still being used in many countries which is the full-screen 4:3 (or 1.33:1) format.

There are 3 commonly used screen formats being used eventhough different countries may use slightly different ratios.

I believe a picture is worth a thousand words so I have prepared some sample pics to add to my explanations.

3 screen ratios commonly used...

a) Full Screen 4:3 (or 1.33:1) > As used by traditional old TV for the old SD TV channels.
b) HD Television Standard Wide Screen 16:9 (or 1.77:1) > As used by all LCD/LED/Plasma HD TV.
c) Cinema Standard Anamorphic Wide Screen, Aproximately 22:10 (or 2:39:1) > As used by Cinemas.

Of course there are other different ratios used such as the (35mm, 65mm, 70mm) formats, Todd-AO format, the IMAX large screen theatres, etc BUT I used only these 3 commonratio sizes to make my explanations simpler.

Sample Pictures (inside spoilers)...


As you can see from the sample pics above, if the same hieght is used as a comparison, the shortest is (a) and the longest is ©.

When 3 such different screen ratio sizes are used, there will be a problem in trying to get the "best fit" for our TV. Why ? Because, generally there are 2 common TV types being used to receive the TV channels.

2 common types of TV screen size used...

a) The old CRT TV which can only accept SD resolution... Screen size ratio : Full Screen 4:3
b) The new generaton thin HD TV which accepts HD/SD resolution... Screen size ratio : Wide Screen 16:9

Ok... lets talk about each of the 2 TV types.

For CRT TV
Its screen size is "full screen 4:3". No problem to fill the entire screen for videos that are originally 4:3.

But how to fit the videos that was filmed in (1) Wide Screen 16:9 and (2) Cinema ~22:10 which are "wider in ratio" to this TV Full Screen 4:3 size ? Well, the answer is simple. Reduce the video screen size to fit the 4:3 TV screen.

Here's the sample pics of fitting and preserving different videos in correct ratios to the Full Screen 4:3 TV...


As you can see, the 2 Wide Screen videos have been reduced in size to fit the TV 4:3 screen BUT there will be top and bottom black bars that appear on the screen.

These black bars are what the movie industry people refer to as... "Widescreen In Letterbox Format", hehe.

Because the Cinema ~22:10 is much much wider, you will notice that the black bars will be much bigger and many people don't like this, hehe.

I have heard of many people's complains before so it doesn't surprise me when someone tells me... "Why ? I have an old 29 inch TV and I don't like to watch movies which look soooo small now, why don't they show it on the entire TV screen"... BUT in order to do that... they have to cut-off a lot of the left and righ side of the movie and zoom in to fit the 4:3 TV screen losing a LOT of important video details... can you imagine cutting of 2 persons talking to each other and each person standing at the extreme left and right screen area and then you will hear them talking but see no people in the screen.

Many times they can do cut-off the left and right side of the video screen and used a process called "Pan And Scan" technique which involve moving the screen area left and right according to what is important or who is talking.

Ok, to partly answer your question for Byond box connected to old CRT TV, the Byond do NOT have setting for "Conversion of 16:9 Input video". It will always refit Wide Screen videos (HD TV and Cinema formats) to "LETTERBOX" with black bars at top and bottom.

For Widescreen HD TV
Its screen size is "Wide Screen 16:9". No problem to fill the entire screen for videos that are originally 16:9.

Well... so how do videos that was filmed in (1) Full Screen 4:3 (old TV films) (2) Cinema ~22:10 fit into this Wide Screen HD TV 16:9 ?

Again, to preserve the correct ratio size, they can choose to use LETTERBOX again but this time the black bars appear at left and right for 4:3 videos.

Here's the sample pics of fitting and preserving different videos in correct ratios to the Wide Screen 16:9 TV...


The Byond Conversion Settings

Ok, to finally answer your question, your Byond box have 3 settings to change the way Full Screen 4:3 and Cinema ~22:10 original-size programs fit into the HD TV screen area.

The 3 Byond "Conversion for 4:3 Input video" settings for Wide Screen 16:9 HD TV...
1) Pillar Box
2) LB Expand
3) Fit to screen

Sample pics of the conversion on the Wide Screen 16:9 TV...

Pillar Box
For "Full Screen 4:3" source programs, the original ratio is preserved so black bars will appear. Good... scenes in video appear correct shape, people appear in original shape. Bad... picture appear smaller with side black bars.

For "Cinema ~22:10" source programs, same thing but black bars appear at top and bottom.

LB Expand
For "Full Screen 4:3" source programs, the video is stretched to fill the screen vertically and horizontally to preserve same ratio and black bars do NOT appear. This is actually "zooming" the entire screen until no black bars appear. Good... no more side black bars and everything appear in correct shape. Bad... scenes in video are zoomed in until a lot of screen areas at top and bottom disappear outside the TV screen and picture sharpness reduced.

For "Cinema ~22:10" source programs, no change or maybe very slight change to fill the small top and bottom black bar. Screen may be zoomed slightly.

Fit to screen
For "Full Screen 4:3" source programs, the video is stretched horizontally only left and right to fill the screen. the original ratio is NOT preserved so that black bars do not appear. Good... no more left and right black bars. Bad... scenes in video appear out of shape, people and everything appear fatter, picture not so sharp due to stretching.

For "Cinema ~22:10" source programs, no change is size. Black bars still appear at top and bottom.

So you need to ask yourself just what you think is the best choice !

Do you want the entire screen area of your HD TV to be "filled up" with no black bars ? If so, choose "Fit to screen" but not good to choose "LB Expand". Well... people will appear "out of shape", hehe.

Do you want everything in the video to appear in their correct original shape, not fat or thin ? If so, choose "Pillar Box" but not good to choose "LB Expand".

In my personal opinion, "LB Expand" is the worst choice because of too much zooming on the wide screen HD TV which makes the picture more blur AND lots of video area at top and bottom "missing"... sometimes can see peoples heads with eyes missing at the top... very ugly. This setting works better on CRT TV (4:3)

Mmm... I have explained enough. I hope I did not confuse you, hehe.

This post has been edited by jamesleetech: Jul 4 2012, 10:21 PM

and the irony thing is, there's more FTA channels in Thaicom fleet than Measat 3/3a combined... Astro, xde satu pun yang nak di-FTA-kan...

Hi All,

Let say I want to terminate my ASTRO subscription. Do I have to give back the satellite dish & the decoder? Cause I read somewhere on the T&C said so... I've been subscribing since last year.
I'm going to get married soon so one ASTRO is enough for both of us.

Thanks~

Is it just me, or overall PQ on HD channels needs to be improved b4 SD one?

This post has been edited by Qash-M: Jul 5 2012, 10:47 AM

Hope your contract is over.Normally they wont bother to collect the dish and decorder,but if u stay near a service center u may rtn the decorder and smartcard,the dish dont bother.Btw congrats welcome to the club!!Hope all of us here are invited! Just a joke friend!On a lighter side if u dont mind, of course when newly married most wives wont mind we watch football,but on a long run they may insist they want to watch serials,then we guys get annoyed ,so think twice abt keeping one astro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!You may consider 2nd decorder which is going for rm50pm!Have one in the hall for thw wives and kids we hv one in our room

@jamesleetech: I just got my Astro Beyond just now. I saw a digital audio port. I can get a Co-Axial-To-Optical Converter (like you mentioned) to connect to my BD player to play full 5.1 surround sound?

Correcto.

No need to return the decoder and dish. However, card you must take it to them and return in person. If you send in by post they will come and buat kacau a year down the road, accuse you of not sending in the card unless you take all sorts of precaution (i.e. send card by registered post, confirm card reached back with customer service a few days down the road, and take down the date and time of call, and name of CS rep).

Nobody able to answer my questions above ???

quietly fix your new dish just outside your windowslah bro !if u use your condo's dish then u get only SD and u can connect via composite cables.u cannot watch in HD u can connect beyond to their SD connection,no problem,only cables from beyond to tv differ.Use your discretion quietly fix one within your premises,lets see what the management does,I bet they wont bother

This post has been edited by smileguy: Jul 5 2012, 03:24 PM

Mmm... the HD channels overall PQ for me is great and I don't know whether Astro can or cannot improve an already great PQ generally, although not stirling or perfectly excellent.

I do agree that its actually debatable when anyone discusses anything about Picture Quality and this also include Audio Quality too.

I am 100% sure that you already knew that PQ for the HD Channels depends on many factors. One of them is the source materials that are used for broadcast. Example... some old TV show materials (the original "Hawaii 5-0" from 1969) came from SD resolution which have been re-encoded and upscaled to HD resolution so the PQ is not so good and sometimes sucks.

In my opinion... as an example on source materials... I found that FMP HD Ch 433, Discovery HD World Ch 571 most of the time (about 80%) have excellent PQ... AND, in contrast that FX HD Ch 726 and KIX HD Ch 729 about 50% of the time have BAD HD PQ !

Other factors that can also affect the PQ are the TV display settings which require proper calibration, cable type and connection, video decoder quality, etc.

Chrominance and Luminance are different for different TVs so proper display calibration includes (among others) adjustments to... , white balance, black levels, colour tones, brightness, contrast, gamma, etc. Hehe... I adjusted my HD TV settings without professional help (Do-It-Yourself) according to what I perceived as the the best settings to achieve the optimum PQ. Of course, professional display calibrator will do a much better job than me ! I believe a forumer here, anfieldude, is a qualified calibrator.



This post has been edited by jamesleetech: Jul 5 2012, 03:51 PM

Yeah, no choice, I also thinking to fix the dish secretly.

Anyway, thanks for your reply.


This post has been edited by victorwan: Jul 5 2012, 04:01 PM

Hi guys,
if i wanna connect Astro HD to 2 TV (watching the same channel)
one 2meters away one 30 meters away(another room).

what you guys suggest me doing.
how do i change channel in the other room ?

You have not yet moved to your new condo so right now, I want to know how you connect the Byond box to your HDTV. Is it using the recommended way by HDMI cable ? Ok... I assume you are using HDMI connection now to watch HD channels so don't make any changes to this HDMI connection when you move.

Your situation has nothing to do with your confusing reference to SD or HD connections.

You CAN still receive HD channels from the new condo existing old Astro installation but there may or may not be problems.

Basically, its about the satellite signal quality and strength which is received and relayed by in-wall cables to your Byond box.

The in-wall cables already installed in your "new" condo are 75 ohms cable which looks like our traditional TV aerial cable. Hopefully its the RG6 recommended type for all condos. This in-wall cable ends in your new condo with a special wall socket for you to connect to your Byond box. There is no such "build-in SD connection" as you have described.

What is important here is the signal strength because your new condo installation infrastructure (LNB, dish, repeater boosters, routers) is not optimised for HD reception.

Poor signal can cause reception interruptions. Example... slight rain or cloudy skies can cause HD channels to "disappear" !

What you need to do when you actually moved to your "new" condo ...

1) Get ready a satellite cable (with enough length from 2m to 5m) with male-to-male (I think) head.

2) Connect the satellite cable to your Byond box "SAT-IN" Input.

3) Then connect this sat cable to the condo wall socket (for satellite connection).

4) Connect the Byond to your TV or Amplifier exactly the same way as you had used before you moved to the new condo.

5) Switch on Byond and check signal strength. For Byond (Non PVR), the Signal Level should be about 180 to 205 on a sunny day... hehe... according to my Byond readings.

I believe for condos, it should be lower... mmm... maybe 160 to 185 roughly. I am guessing the numbers here but I think you know what I mean about the lower signal strength.

If the signal strength usually stays at very low level on a sunny day, then you will have constant interruptions to your Byond channels reception.

HD channel reception require a much larger bandwidth so its more "sensitive" to drop in signal levels. SD channels are less sensitive.

If the actual signal strength is not acceptable causing a lot of disruption to your HD channels, then there is not much you can do to change the condo management decision.

Yes... you can "secretly" install another dish outside your condo but this depends on how long before the condo management finds out. Some condos have verandahs so its easier to "hide" the dish but some condos only have vertical flat walls outside with only windows so its not easy to "hide" the dish.

Probably I can also suggest that you contact the condo owners/tenants action committee for help. You need to spend some time to do some leg work, hehe. Contact as many condo owners as possible, together with the committee, and get their support to request the condo management to make a request to Astro to upgrade the LNB, Repeater Boosters, Cable Routers for HD channels reception. In-wall cables cannot be changed but can still be used. You must let all the people know that upgrading the Astro equipment at the condo do NOT affect the normal SD channels reception... in fact, tell them that in future, if anyone changes their old Astro box to Byond can receive HD channels without problems. After all the signatures have been collected... pester the condo management to submit the request to Astro. Hehe... if you can get about 100 condo owner signatures to show their intention to subscribe to HD service or already subscribed to HD service (Superpack) then will have a much higher chance for those Astro bastards to come and upgrade. Success or failure to upgrade the condo Astro installation... I don't know the answer.

HDMI cable, Component Video cables, Optical cables, RCA cables are ALL connections between the Byond box AND the HDTV or Amplifier or "Audio/Video Devices"... completely not related and nothing to do with the Byond box connection to the condo installation for satellite reception.

If you use HDMI to connect your Byond box to your HDTV, then use back the same connection so ...hehe... don't change to RCA (yellow) cable or whatever.



This post has been edited by jamesleetech: Jul 5 2012, 05:56 PM

LOL... Hehe.. Thanks for the info... Well.. Newly married needs more money.. So.. Need to save somewhere else.. Hehe...

Hehehe... simpan duit susu RM 50 per month for future use. Eventhough we are strangers... May both of you, as newlyweds, have a blissful lifetime marriage and continue to have a happy family life.

Mmm... sorry.... for being out-of-topic here.