Remember when I blogged about Astro B.yond some time back?
Well recently, Astro decided to let me try it out for myself. So they helped me get it installed in my place just a few weeks ago. Getting it installed was a bit of an adventure.
You see I stay by myself in one side of the apartment and my brother and sister stay on another side. The Astro is actually on my brother’s and sister’s side of the apartment hooked up to an old box TV we have.
I have a HD LCD TV on my side but it’s not plugged into anything except for my DVD Player and XBOX. So when I was going to get Astro B.yond installed on my side of the apartment I met with some protests. My brother and sister wanted to have it on their side instead so in the end because it was 2vs1 I let it happen. So that means I won’t be able to watch programs on HD but I guess I can live with that.
So since I’ve been away for a week I just finally got down to using it today. I played around with all the features. I noticed that my maid who watches the Astro in my apartment far more than the rest of us has already figured out to record a program and recorded one of hers.
Some Bollywood dancing program.
The core feature and the most user-friendly feature of Astro B.yond is the ability to record any programs you want and watch it any time you want. To me it was really cool but always felt like a “nice to have” rather than a “must have”. Just like iPad.
That’s when I was wrong.
Sure movies and all you can just buy DVDs or well go for the less legal option of downloading them. But there’s so much on TV that’s worth watching but I miss just because of the timing. Like I scrolled through HBO, Star Movies and Cinemax only to choose to record “The Postman”.
Then I browsed through Discovery Channel and Discovery Science and I came across all the programs that I’d definitely watch and wouldn’t easily be able to find. I ended up filling up my recording queue very quickly. Extreme Machines, Modern Marvels, Mega Machines… all the kind of stuff that I’d always watch when I catch it on Discovery (upon writing this Shorty just called me a geek for liking these shows).
Then there were a lot of other stuff. Like I’m really into Modern History especially about World War 2, so I scrolled through the History Channel and looked for programs I would watch. If that wasn’t enough I went to CNBC then because on weekends they have features where they interview billionaires or give you a look in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Then I thought of the other stuff I loved watching… like E!’s True Hollywood Stories.. and it went on and on!
I went crazy! ALL THE TV I ALWAYS WANTED TO WATCH BUT NEVER FOUND THE TIME TO WATCH…. JUST LAID ITSELF BEFORE MY EYES! ALL… accessible from this one controller.
So I went to the Astro website and started looking at what programs they have coming up on the channels and what I’d like to watch. It suddenly became addictive!
Now I can’t wait for the night to end so I can watch all these recorded programs this weekend. Oh man.. I never thought that Astro B.yond would be so cool! I’ll blog again after a few weeks of using it to see if I still love it!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space