I am not surprised that "Thrill" SD channel 728 will be launched soon since ASTRO Holdings Sdn. Bhd owns part of it. Its a complex group of different companies which have ownership of the many various satellite channels and services which included IPTV, Live Event production (such as live concerts), In-House Audio Dubbing production (such as dubbing to Bahasa Melayu audio for the US TV series "Terranova"), FM terrestrial radio stations, and so forth.

As I have earlier mentioned on 05-03-12 (http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2114557/+820#), ASTRO Holdings Sdn. Bhd owns part of Thrill, Celestial HD and Kix channels. I repeat part of my comments below for reference...

Just the simple name of Astro means a very diverse, vast and complicated network of different services which include satellite TV channels. So how many other satelite/cable TV companies can provide serious competition ? In Malaysia, others are NOT allowed to compete with Astro so no comnpetitors, BUT I can only keep on dreaming that this happens in 2017 because competition is good for us.

Again but... Astro monopoly the satellite TV services in Malaysia because of the exclusive license from our Malaysian Government for satellite DTH transmissions until 2017 ! ABN (Asian Broadcasting Network, Malaysia) have to wait for about 5 years and cannot even touch the satellite TV services with no satellite "broadcast" license from our bad-ass 1Malaysia government!

I believe most of the other operators in our South East Asia region are localised to their own countries such as StarHub Cable TV (Singapore), mio TV (IPTV, Singapore), Indovision Pay TV (using their own IndostarII Satellite, Indonesia) but these operators cannot offer their services in Malaysia because our Malaysian government only give exclusive license to Assteruk ! Probably to protect the billions of ringgit already invested into our MEASAT satellites which include the All Asia Broadcast Centre (ABC) and Cyberjaya Broadcast Centre (CBC). Many critics may shout unfair monopoly with no competition in the satellite TV arena !

I think that few of us will read the detail background of Assteruk. You can read the details at... http://www.astro.com.my/portal/about-astro. There are also some interesting info such as the satellite orbital location and transponder frequency.

Its interesting that Astro Holdings S/B subsidiary company, Celestial Tiger Entertainment, bought the entire Shaw Brothers Film Library which is currently the world’s largest Chinese film library ! This means thousands of shaw production films that include from the Sixties, Seventies, etc and most were digitally remastered to high HD quality. The library includes P. Ramlee black & white films and Jins Shamsuddin (Malaysia James Bond) colour films produced by Shaw or its subsidiary, Cathay Keris. Because of the poor preservation of the original masters of P. Ramlee films (such as "Keluarga 69", "Sergeant Hassan") the quality may not be perfect. Mmm... I wonder why Celestial HD is ONLY showing repeats of less than 18 films for more than 2 weeks now !

I wouldn't mind to watch it in HD, even with many repeats. The question is, when will one permenant HD channel for malay is launched?

bro, That prompts me to ask when an indian hd channel wl be availiable?!The issue of repeats is common here simply bcos there is no variety of channels. 90% of channels are of fixed content.you must hv 200 over channels not abt 100 with m ore then a dozen in house

astro njoi dish compared with astro byond dish

astro njoi set-top box similar with astro byond set-top box

same as astro byond

Hello all.
Just wondering, did anyone subscribe to Lawak Ke, Der HD?

Usually, for pay-per-view channels, Astro only allowed viewing for 48hrs. But for this Lawak Ker Der, the notification I receive is for the whole month!

or is the charges recurring?

For me, I don't know. But I think the best person to answer you and get much better clarification is Astro Customer Support. Call their toll free phone line and ask them whether there are any "recurring charges". If got recurring charges and if you don't want such charges, clearly inform them to cancel after one month.

Indeed you are right. Plus, their response is more accurate
Btw, I didn't know that the Astro customer service contact number is toll-free? If it is, all the better

Hello all.
Just wondering, did anyone subscribe to Lawak Ke, Der HD?

Usually, for pay-per-view channels, Astro only allowed viewing for 48hrs. But for this Lawak Ker Der, the notification I receive is for the whole month!

or is the charges recurring?

hi all is it worth subscribe astro with movies package + HD only? how is the movie like? got scene cutted a lot or its non filter?

The question is wl ABN takeoff nationwide? Some say yes cos its like megatv thing the towers can carry signals,I am in doubt abt in maybe someone here can enlightent us on this .
BTW james i do also remember the days i had megatv, it was fun too a few channels but ok,the service was good at rm45,but the nuts pulled out i wonder why! Asstro now seems too artificial but very expensive!

Mmm, smileguy... good question... will ABN go nationwide later ? Not only do I have doubts, I am very pessimistic that ABN will go nationwide in the future so I do hope it does not close before that !

Ya loh, waited and waited for MegaTV to go nationwide, then dissapointment. Then U TV, dissapointment again when they migrated to U Mobile ! I can't be blamed for being so pessimistic!

I believe MegaTV used terrestrial over-the-air transmission using special aerial for reception. I think the transmission was in digital. Don't think its in HD at that time, as HD TV commercial channels were only launched in other countries only recently sometime on or after 2007. MegaTV was not nationwide so I was one of the millions that were shut out.

I am not a telecommunications engineer. I suspect that there maybe many limitations for terrestrial over-the-air transmission of HD channels because of more and more data which needs to be fed to a transmission line such as broadband internet with faster and faster Mbit speed required, 1080i/720p resolution video, 5.1 surround sound, 3D active shutter interlaced videos, blah, blah, blah. I shall simply call it as "huge bandwidth" which terrestrial over-the-air HD transmission may not be able to carry. This is where Fibre Optic Cable can do the job by providing the "huge bandwidth" needed and also allowing for broadband internet which requires 2-way synchronous traffic. Over-the-air transmission is one way to our TV so FULL internet access is not possible.

I remember the time in the early 1990 when ATUR 450 MHz mobile phones (Dai Kor Dai, in cantonese) were used. At that time, single RBS (Radio Base Station) tower can cover a much wider circular area but when changed to ART 900 and higher frequencies, the coverage area of each RBS have significantly been reduced. This is why we see so many of such "mini towers" in different parts of town. Ok... For HD channels, I do suspect that there may be problems building even more towers at closer distances due to shorter coverage area and more powerful transmitters required to carry the "high bandwidth" of HD channels. Please correct me if I am be wrong.

In my unqualified opinion, because of such "bandwidth" limitations and technical problems of such over-the-air HD transmission, such companies would NOT choose to build such infrastructure that are not future proof, that require too much upgrade costs. Look at what happened for older shared satellite dish installed in older condos/apartments with in-wall cabling. When a building is under construction, its easier to install in-wall cabling to support both the normal Astro and the latest Byond HD. But not so easy to upgrade or have problems after the building construction have completed.

We have seen a few failures before when a few TV networks closed before they can go nationwide. Two exceptions are TV3 and NTV7 which are now nationwide but when will they go HD with 5.1 audio plus other goodies ? RTM already tested telecast in HD for the opening and closing ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics 2008. My opinion...maybe wait for Wawasan 2030 or 2040 ? Or wait for 2013 to see what happens because the Malaysian Government have set that date for all analogue transmission to be changed to digital, SD and HD. This will release and free the frequency spectrum for use by 4G mobile networks. TV channels have already migrated to digital transmission only (SD and HD) in such countries as Britain, US and Hong Kong since 2008.

Ya loh, what I have mentioned above are only my "kopitiam" talk at "Coffee Bean" shop so some info may not be accurate or based on wrong facts. Just my opinion for discussion, hehe.

ABN should be able to broadcast OTT on the Unifi fiber back bone. Basically they use the TM fiber to send IP encapsulated DVB-C signal until to the junction outside your house, then from there it is converted back to cable signal.

ABN should be able to broadcast OTT on the Unifi fiber back bone. Basically they use the TM fiber to send IP encapsulated DVB-C signal until to the junction outside your house, then from there it is converted back to cable signal.

hi all is it worth subscribe astro with movies package + HD only? how is the movie like? got scene cutted a lot or its non filter?

astro njoi dish compared with astro byond dish


astro njoi set-top box similar with astro byond set-top box

same as astro byond


Images were came from Invest and Travel  NJOI: Free satellite TV

looks not bad, giving the same byond decoder... =p, at least astro can safely migrate to h264 once all other subscribers are swapped to that decoder