Someone informed me that he got an official info from Astro that they received a memo that, legacy Astro box are scheduled to be officially discontinue its use on 31 January 2020.
Meaning from 31 Jan/1 Feb 2020, legacy box users will no longer able to watch Astro channels and must upgrade to at least HD box to continue watching Astro channels.
This date is subject to change, meaning if still many legacy box users didn't change to the HD box by then, they might extend the date, so don't get excited too soon ya...
From what I see is, if they see that if left a very very few remaining legacy box users that doesn't want to swap to HD box, then they'll just initiate the "Legacy Box Switch-Off" or "MPEG2 Switch-off" by force (That's what I call it la).
They are providing several upgrade offers, like I said earlier, including remain the current monthly subscription rate as now, and no installation fee, no additional monthly fee, no contract, nothing.
Yet you get new Astro HD box, satellite dish, new cabling, remote control, smart card, basically everything new.
So basically, there's no reason for legacy box users to reject the upgrade offer cuz you're paying nothing to get new stuff.
When asked how come Astro didn't make any public announcement about this, they say because only minority of users are still using legacy box, so they rather target that information by informing them directly (by email, mail or SMS). They said if they would make a major public announcement about it, many people would become fed up. From what I see, they don't wanna face those public reaction saying that Astro is sucking people's money and causing inconvenience to users by forcing them to swap to HD box, even though free-of-charge option is available, many would be unconvinced and thinking that there must be lots of hidden T&Cs. So they wanna lay low and don't want too many people to know about this, cuz even if they know, it's irrelevant to many since almost all Astro users already on HD or PVR boxes.
If I would be a bad guy, I would advise her to continue using the legacy box, and tell her to take good care of the legacy box (make sure don't spoil it by any means), until the day when Astro officially discontinue the use of legacy box completely. Not because I want her to move backwards instead of moving forward, but because I'm kinda interested to see how's that "switch off" looks like, and would it be any "switch off info/message" similar like Malaysia's analogue TV broadcast switch off.
Hope someone would share some screenshots here when that day really comes, cuz existing HD and PVR box users are unlikely to have the chance to see that.
less than 48 hours left.