they should be waiting for all consumers change to the byond box. Once done, they would be able to use H264 and phase out mpeg-2 for good. thats only mho.

i think they did the calculations on the decoder box by pace?a bit too costly? maybe they have some other upcoming cheaper boxes with h264 support that im not aware of, nevertheless, its good for them to change to h264... look at unifi... its really stable and good (that is also because they maintained with 2Mbps).

well looking at those channels, most of them are pre-existing, perhaps those had exist will still be on mpeg-2. i dont see a reason for astro to waste extra bandwidth to specially cater mpeg4 channels when mpeg-2's exist.

Sigh... I want back my [v] international =/.... now they even have [v]HD =/

you can watch free here: http://www.channelv.in/livetv

officially and legally free

Yea, I want [v]HD too, but MTV Live HD is quite neat too, can watch back few days old schedule on demand, and just skip to music videos

As for [v]HD, only can lurk at the youtube page for the moment: http://www.youtube.com/user/channelVHD?blend=2&ob=0 lol

832 from Sg ? Then once gotten from SG, recompress again? lol

Wow.. thats sad...

But lets say if I changed to PVR decoder, can I still add on the HDD to add additional recording hours ?

Was googling about Ka band and I came across this:

http://www.gilatnetworks.com/data/uploads/.../gilat-vsat.pdf

"Ka frequencies (~30GHz uplink & ~20GHz downlink) are almost
twice the frequency used by Ku (~14GHz uplink and ~12GHz
downlink). When high frequencies are transmitted and received in a
heavy rain fall area, a noticeable signal degradation occurs and is
proportional to the amount of rain fall (commonly known as known
as “rain fade”). The higher frequency the more a signal is susceptible
to rain fade. A typical Ku-band rain fade rate is ~1dB/sec while the
fade rate in Ka-band is significantly higher at around 3-5dB/sec.


Most new Ka-band satellites implement spot-beam technology
to reuse the frequency band across the desired coverage area. As
opposed to wide beams that cover large territories (e.g. all of Europe),
spot beams cover much smaller territories (1/50 – 1/100 of the large territory)."



With the description above, would this new generation of Ka band improve or at least maintain at the current Ku band performance involving rain fade giving that this new Ka band is using higher frequencies, but using spot-beam technology instead?

Actually.. I've seen some house nearby my neighbourhood having an obvious larger dish. Its an astro phillips dish... that dish doesn't look 60cm at all! Wish to change one to that size too, of course being legal to use it.

No idea, but very nice to see

I can assure you the existing channels will be more compressed.

But they are considered ok la, now start to offer such one off euro pack service... i guess they know competition is getting stiffer lol

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Added on February 11, 2012, 11:10 amlike your news quotes, always broadcast related =D

This post has been edited by kaspersky-fan: Feb 11 2012, 11:10 AM

no 3D tv lol... but i wasnt really impressed with it, considering my eyes go bonkers even after 15 minutes using those annoying glasses...

you might as well buy a non 3D telly and use the remaining to get a better sound system =p

what made you buy the tv?

but even for now astro's 3d is 960x540 effective resolution, not that detailed =/

=D lyngsat stalker!, we are gonna get along very well ahahaha

I wonder how much bandwidth they gonna allocate for news channel in HD if they ever bring in. I've seen some samples at 3-4Mbps, 1080i... they still look very good =p

Actually for HD's they are not bad. (I mean they have to maintain quality since it is the selling point for HD).

Zhi Zhun HD's when showing tvb drama does look very detailed


Hrm.. that CNN channel.. can't find it =/

But I did see channel v international free to air in NSS-6

Licensing issue perhaps? Even astro byond iptv don't have media prima channels...

But to be honest, no matter what competitor is out, their coverage could never be as wide as astro's. You gotta face it that satellite coverage is a very excellent way to reach out to Malaysians in remote areas. Rain fade might be an issue, but once the government allows larger ku band dishes, it should able to solve that issue.

Though, another possible competitor would be perhaps DVB-T2 provider.

Yup, its like some blurry cast on the video feed. When they handle ESPN HD in house, it was very sharp and clear... I honestly dont know what is Singapore doing to the feed now =/

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Added on February 20, 2012, 10:45 pmI guess from what you have described there, it really depends on the program and source. I particularly don't really fancy History HD as it doesn't seem so real.. at some programmings. So far, FPM HD is not bad (also depends on some movies).

HBO HD used to be worst, with SD being stretched. Now, those older movies, they had actually remastered in HD again. You should send direct email to HBO etc channels to complain =p

Have you seen Singapore's HD5 feed? Most were upscaled SD =/

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Added on February 20, 2012, 10:54 pmAlso.. check this out, the video bitrate is insane =D



This post has been edited by kaspersky-fan: Feb 20 2012, 10:54 PM