Not so sure about this latest B.yond decoder...

If you want to auto update to latest version, put your decoder into standby mode and it will update by itself.

HITS is suitable for viewers that love to watch back the old 1970s-2000s classic series. Some viewers (especially the age of 50s or older) enjoy watching it.

Useless channel? Nope. HITS channel's average monthly net reach is.... good, I guess?



Source: Astro Radar website

Agree. Well said! (y)

TM won't reduce package prices, but mostly only increase the Internet speed. Why? The reason is simple. Because TM wants to gain profit and all they want is your money, just like Astro.

Astro' is a strongly and extreme profit-oriented company, and not putting customers first. If you are wondering why:
No HD music channel, Japanese HD channel

The answer is: LOW VIEWERSHIP (viewership not as high as others)

Whenever the things they do doesn't bring any profit and benefit to the company (low viewership is one of it), Astro will choose to discontinue, or not provide it at all.

Because Astro's greatest DTH pay TV monopoly, there are 5 million growing customers now. This makes Astro is the best platform for advertisers to advertise their products/services.

So for Astro, they can earn money from customer's subscription + advertisement money + others = MORE MONEY.

In conclusion, TM and Astro are just the same. Strongly and extreme profit-oriented company.

Not 1.9 mil byond customers...

It's 1.9 millions customers are subscribed to HD.
You can actually use B.yond decoder even if you don't subscribe to HD, you know?

Upgrade to B.yond decoder does not mean must subscribe to HD. Remember that.

No it's not waste. Astro already stopped production and pretty much discontinued support on legacy Astro set-top-boxes many years ago.

Legacy Astro set-top-boxes now are considered obsolete (in technically, such as only MPEG2 video codec support (no MPEG4) and DVB-S broadcast support (no DVB-S2), no HDMI output and many more). So Astro will only provide B.yond decoders to new subscribers, as well as existing subscribers that wish to upgrade, as it supports the latest and modern technology, such as HD, PVR, IPTV and many more.

So the good thing is, customers can enjoy HD service right away whenever they wish to subscribe to HD service, no need to change set-top-box or whatsoever.

So, another purpose of B.yond decoder is to replace the legacy Astro STBs. Why would they provide STBs that uses obsolete technology?

Btw "tvN Movies" channel is being advertised on tvN channel itself now.
I do wonder, will Astro bring the channel?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUrnEySPf...EJHNkFjbFE/view

Have you try to restart decoder?

Are you able to watch these channels (provided that you subscribed to the respective channels)
How about NHK World (398), Bloomberg (519), Disney Junior (613), Disney Channel (615), Disney XD (617), FYI (736), Astro Arena (801), eGG Plus (806)?

Because legacy Astro STB don't have smart card pairing, and you are free to insert it to other STBs.

B.yond decoders has smart card pairing, meaning that the particular smart card can be only read on that particular B.yond STB and cannot be used with other B.yond STBs. This will prevent illegal card sharing via Internet (CCcam / cline).

Actually all this while, the picture quality of SD channel is bad. But, the only thing that viewers don't realise this all this while is because of the display quality of CRT TV.

CRT TV has lesser display pixels, plus most of older CRT TV tends to sharpen the image quality by default. Some of the very old CRT TVs don't have setting for you to change image sharpness! So, watch SD channel using CRT TV will appears to look good, but in reality the video quality itself is not.

Because newer LCD, LED TVs has millions of pixels for you to enjoy way better image quality for HD content, you will see the ACTUAL quality of Astro's SD quality, which it will obviously look blurry or "below average" quality on big screen TVs.

Still hard to understand? Then try compare like this. If you play 320x240 video on a 10 over years old Sony Ericsson slide phones, the display quality will appears to be okay. But if you play the same 320x240 video on latest iPhone/Samsung or any other brands of flagship phones, it doesn't look good anymore, or maybe just.... average. Why? This is the same thing as comparing CRT TVs and latest modern LED TVs when watching SD quality content.

Yeah you guys are right.

MPEG4 is newer technology, that's why you can get good image quality with lower video bitrate compared to MPEG2.

Btw MPEG2 is an obsolete technology now... MPEG2 is invented during 90s... MPEG4 is first introduced during 2000s but it went mainstream among broadcasters and consumers around late 2000s or beginning 2010s.

If you see pixelation (like blocky, edgy image), it is because the video bitrate is not sufficient (not high enough) for the particular scene of the content.

However, the latest video codec is H.265 or also known as HEVC codec.
(MPEG-4 is known as H.264)

Advantage of H.265/HEVC? Able to provide exact video quality at almost half of the video bitrate required for H.264. For satellite broadcasts, they will be able to provide even more SD/HD channels on a single transponder compared to H.264.

H.265/HEVC is most probably will be the preferred codec to be used for UHD broadcasts cover H.264. However, H.265/HEVC is not mainstream yet for now, but the progress is there as several broadcasters (especially satellite, including C band Measat 3 satellite) are already testing on UHD broadcasts using HEVC codec.

But then, the consumer's receiver unit must be able to support HEVC codec, which means the receiver unit needs to be replaced. HEVC codec may become mainstream to everyone from the year of 2020 onwards.

After Lifetime channel preview ends on 31 Jan 2017, you will need to subscribe to both Variety pack and HD service to watch the channel.

It is technically possible. But still, it still depends whether the broadcaster (RTM or Media Prima) wants to provide their channel in HD quality or not. Because the broadcasters have to pay more money to MYTV Broadcasting to broadcast their channels in HD quality compared to SD quality.

TV3 as an a la carte channel? Nah I don't think that's gonna happen.

TV3 is a FTA channel la... Why are we talking about this??

http://www.theedgemarkets.com/my/article/m...nviable-dtt-fee

But still, they only they "might", not "they will". Time will tell, once Digital TV is officially made available to general public.

Well, we can't talk much about it for now... Will see how eventually would Media Prima channels be made available to Digital TV or not.

For my opinion, I think it will be included as free HD channel (as long you are using B.yond decoder) just like Astro Maya HD, Astro Xi Yue HD, Go Shop and Go Asean. Because TV3 (and the rest of Media Prima channels) is a FTA channels, it sounds impossible for Astro to make it as a pay channel on Astro platform.

Read here to know more it. https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/media/make-...r-mytv-and-dttv

The reason why Media Prima channels are made available on Astro is because it can help them to expand their audience reach to not only the viewers that is using VHF/UHF antennas to receive, but also Astro customers as well.

With more audience reach, more viewers watch their channels = encourage advertisers to advertise no their Media Prima channels

So base on my assumption, it seems that Media Prima is the one that pays Astro to provide their channels onto Astro platform. In addition to that, do you guys remember when Astro IPTV and Njoi is newly introduced, Media Prima channels were not available at the beginning? After few months, then only TV3 and TV9 is available, and then few months later is NTV7 and 8TV. From what I see, hmmm yeah, Media Prima pays Astro, not the other way round.

So, what if Media Prima channels is being upgraded to HD? I would say, Media Prima got to pay more money to Astro compared to how much they've paid for their existing SD quality channels.