Astro vs UNIFI

I guess most houses in Malaysia would have an Astro Decoder & Dish install in their home. Astro has been here for quite a long time already. However they are not the first ‘pay-TV’ in Malaysia. The first was MEGA TV and I know this because my fathers use to subscribe before. MEGA TV offer a few channel like AXN,ESPN, HBO etc. However, when Astro comes in with a lot of package, it is hard for MEGA TV to sustain and they had to leave the market.

Astro & MEGA TV is using a different marketing strategy compare with the normal TV station such as TV1,TV2,TV3 and so on. They provide shows with no or minimal advertisement but customer need to pay the price. As for the other local TV station, it is free but we have to bear with all the advertisement during show. I still remember at that point of time I felt irritated watching shows with advertisement because what Malay call ‘Potong Stim’. I just want to enjoy what I want to see. So I persuaded my father to subscribe to this ‘Pay-TV’ so that I can watch movies, series and most importantly Man Utd game.

Even after I married, I still subscribe to Astro so that I can watch my favourite football team, watching movies, TV Series etc. However after a few years, I notice that Astro has becoming more boring. Here is some reason that I guess most people already know about:-

-          Advertisement has increase and most of the advertisement is to promote their own channel etc.

-          Movies/TV Series/Shows/Games are being repeated again and again.

-          Connection is bad during raining time. Something that Astro has not come out with a solution yet ever since.

-          Subscription price has increase but no improvement on the above mention

So how come they were able to do this and nobody can do anything about it. The reason is that there is no competition in the market that can challenge them and so far people still subscribe even if they increase the price. I guess that is the mentality of Malaysian. We never fight but just go with the flow. If you are in western countries, you can see people start boycotting etc.

If you ask me also, I still subscribe because I don’t want to loose watching MU game every weekend. But I must admit that I only watch the sport channel for MU game only and maybe some Selangor game if there is a live telecast in Arena. The rest of the sport channel is being left like that and I have to pay for the most expansive package in Astro which is under utilised.

Luckily, I have found a solution on how to settle this problem - UNIFI. Actually I don’t really know about UNIFI because I haven’t use or enquire from TM but base on my own research, UNIFI provide better internet speed to user and at the same time, they also provide free channel and pay channel. One of the pay channel is MUTV. Yeeeaaah!!!

So how this is better than ASTRO? Hmm… Let see. I can just pay 1 channel for sport under UNIFI. You can save by paying for the channel that you use. I also will be able to download/stream movies/series/shows etc from the internet and watch without the fear of advertisement during the show. And the best part is, I can watch what I want to watch and whenever I want to watch it. This mean I have the full control over the TV. The bad part is to find/search for the best website that give a quality images would be a headache unless you found one.

Connection during raining time wouldn’t be a problem anymore. However, there is a possibility that the connection can be bad if TM didn’t improve over time. So far, I have not heard any complain about UNIFI. Maybe somebody out there can enlighten me with one.

Anyway, this is just my nonsense point of view. You may agree or you may not. But I have made my decision to stop using Astro when I able to connect to UNIFI. Anyway, thanks to Astro for their services all this while. I have nothing against you. This is just a “business decision” if you understand what I mean.

My Very Own Blog

This would be my first entry in my very own blog. So what should I write about? Since this is just a “cakap kosong” and I don’t expect people to read it, then I will just post about what is blog. Wikipedia has come out with a very interesting definition of blog:-

“A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.”

What I understand from this phrase is that a blog is created by a person who regularly posts about anything that they want at any particular point of time. This particular person is also known as a blogger and their job is keeping their blogs updated with whatever information their want the world to know. Why I say “the world to know” is because the web is accessible by everyone who have connection to the internet as long as they know how to search for it.

So how many blog is there in the web? I don’t know. There must be thousands or millions or even billions of blogs in the web. There are blogs created for political purpose, sport, artist/fan page, knowledge, personnel thought, businesses etc.  For whatever reason there is, everyone seems to enjoy creating their own blogs and sharing their knowledge to the world.

So the question now is why I created a blog? Some would think that I created a blog because I want to follow the current trend. Maybe you are right and maybe you are wrong. I never intend to write a blog before and for me there is better thing to do in life rather than writing a blog. But recently I have been reading a few blogs which I come across when I “googling” (is this even a word) through the web. And the interest keeps growing every day for me to create my own blog.

So why now and what are you going to write in your own blog? Why now, maybe because I was stuck in my house after my ACL surgery and I get bored of just being on bed and doing my physio. So after much consideration (and discussion with my beautiful wife), I come out with my very own blog. My blog would be a very simple type and it is just talking nonsense (or in malay ‘cakap kosong’) on how I see this world from my own eyes. I don’t expect people to read it as long as my wife and my kids read it is enough.

So enough with this nonsense and I will keep this blog updated in future. And to those who read this thanks for reading and just enjoy and please remember this is just a nonsense blog and it is a bit ‘poyo’ because I use English as my main language. But it doesn’t mean that I won’t be using Malays in my next post.