dBm is an absolute measurement, the accuracy of this measurement may be poor, these decoders are not lab equipment.

Some brands will work on weaker and more degraded signals than other - better ICs, optional components and attention to good design

Is there anything taller nearby? I would worry about lightning strike

Then think seriously about getting a lightning conductor installed.
I know a few people whose houses have been hit, everything electrical in the house destroyed and a rewire needed

That is the most expensive part of a well installed lightning protection system.
Don't waste money on the exotic air terminations aka lightning rods, they have no proven benefit over a simple rod

No surge arrestor will protect your TV and decoder if the aerial gets directly struck. Your house might burn down too.

The solution is to put in a proper protection, rod, down conductor and earthing about 1m away from your antenna pole and reaching 1m higher
Something like the products on this page:
https://www.eibabo.com/en/dehn/interception...-150-eb10434686

As time goes by, the number of viewers who cannot watch HD will fall to the point that it would save Astro and MyTV money to give them a free TV, just to be able to turn off all the legacy SD duplication

All TV sudios here are now HD capable, anything SD now is for backwards compatibilty or to reduce transmission cost. HD was charged at 2x price of a SD channel.

Astro waste satellite bandwidth by duplicating the same channel in both SD and HD versions.

In Germany
https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018/03/12/...-astra-in-2020/

No, that makes it more robust and transmit further, at the expense of needing more multiplexes

PFL has been on free to air in the UK since the season restarted, a consequence of the empty stadiums.

And a small number of transmitter sites

A studio has a lot more than the cameras to upgrade for 4K HD.
You have all the recorders, switching and effects equipment too
An old studio could still be analog

A very big chunk of MYTVs fees probably end up with TM, they own most of the sites, control maintenance access and the distribution network.
TM used to make a fortune from the analog TV transmitters, count the transmitter towers at Genting and Bkt Sg Besi

DRM was a nice idea that just has not happened anywhere.
DAB+ will not work on Malaysian roads, you need more or less line of sight coverage from the transmitter. Trying to get cover on the winding sections around the Menora or Genting tunnels would be hopeless
4G/5G on the major roads will be the way forward, but I expect analogue VHF FM to be around for a long time
DTTV broadcast of radio is a convenient way of providing cover to houses in rural areas

DRM fits best in the 3-30 MHz HF band, very under-utilized these days, armed forces and amateur radio only. Few of the national broadcasters still bother
The 47 to 68 MHz band is being used by the armed forces and the PDRM these days and is quite busy

The snag is that you end up with a special radio for Malaysia

DAB+ has failed miserably in Europe in hilly terrain, let alone mountainous like here
All the people in the Klang Valley complaining aboout MyTV reception shows how bad DAB+ would be at street level in high rise KL

This post has been edited by dayojah: Sep 13 2020, 10:33 AM

The digital trunked radio is UHF TETRA, heavily used by most government blue light agencies, not so much by the armed forces and police. You might have seen them using the TETRA radios at the MCO roadblocks, as they wanted to talk to each other
https://www.malaysia.gov.my/portal/content/30574?language=my

This post has been edited by dayojah: Sep 13 2020, 05:08 PM

Very few people would tell the difference between 128 kbps AAC or OPUS and the original 1544 PCM
128 kbps MP3 can be detected by many people if you know what to listen for

Mediacorp has many multiplexes to fill. MyTV will not be going to 96 kbps or more, but not going below 48 kbps AAC would be tolerable

Thailand is a funny market, they are really isolated by language

There is no difference between distributing an analogue and a digital TV channel on a MATV system
They channels are different, so some sort of retune is needed.
The antenna may be facing in the wrong direction.

Far more likely the old MATV is just broken from vandalism, water leaks and lightning strikes.
At one stage my condos MATV had 240 Vac sitting on the socket centre pin, lethal.