MiTV Sir ? I dont think so ...

2005-12-08 20:17:46
We all heard about MiTV launch a few months back which has around 40++ channels including the normal TV1, TV2, TV3, NTV7, 8TV bla bla lots of chinese channels around 14 channels are chinese i think. We're all excited for the competition it's giving to Astro.

Unfortunately i got to tell you its a piece of CRAP ! Here's what ive observed so far from MiTV. I was walking around Berjaya Timesquare and they had this demo booth of MiTV and i asked for the remote to play aroudn with it. The remote is white (yeah yeah apple style konon) as well as the decoder. I fiddle around with it and the interface wasnt that impressive. Well its a little bit more responsive then Astro but layout wise was a bit unprofessional IMHO.

So i tried one of the channels and i made it full screen. (the button i pressed was something like eFT or something) eft ?? Electronic Funds Transfer ? hahaha .. Anyway i noticed something was wrong when the screen was full. There's lossy compression involed in the quality of the broadcast. I noticed there's blocky JPEG type of image compression which made the quality of the image like a streaming media. Seriously it sux ... u cant even have clear picture of a person's face if u look closely. I'd bet its because of the compression. I can notice quality of image difference with ASTRO because i dont suspect ASTRO uses compression in their broadcast. (well maybe a little but its clear) though not HDTV clear.


(the quality difference was something like this ASTRO left MiTV right)

I asked the guy why is the picture has lossy compression quality and they guy said its because of the TV. WTF? Its a freakin widescreen TV and the broadcast wasnt even in widescreen and it wasnt even stretched to widescreen and it was in its native resolution state. How could the TV had effected that lossy image? Im guessing the guy didn't know what i was talking about but what do i care?

My theory of this effect is because MiTV uses low bandwidth band, which is the UHF. And in order to have UHF to transmit a encrypted digital signal they can't hold much data that would allow smooth transmission. So because of that, they had to compress the media which suit the bandwidth, and as a result, the lossy compression quality of the image. This is really a thumbs down for MiTV and with that said ASTRO is way much better.

Pricing ... MiTV's decoder cost you RM799 and monthly of RM30 which includes 40++ channel. ASTRO cheapest pacakge would be RM199 for the decoder and monthly of RM50. Who would pay RM799 for the decoder and not getting Star World, AXN, Discovery, plus .. a lossy quality image? though it may sounds cheap to pay RM30 a month and a promotion of the first 4 month free. Their decoder has 4 usb ports, rj45, rj32 and the UHF socket (ala yang lobang ariel tu apa ntah orang panggil)

Overall i may say MiTV is not worth money spent. I dont think they'll survive through out the coming years with that kind of lossy image quality, nobody wants it. We're moving ahead with HDTV and UHDTV now .. why is MiTV going backwards i dont understand? UHF? Bad choice ... Good Luck MiTV!

(these are just speculations as i dont know how really MiTV works. These speculation are based on my observation of the demo product and my limited knowledge of data transmission. So correct me if im wrong and place constructive comments ^_^)