Most living rooms in Malaysia has a pretty similar set up. Here’s what’s front of my living room couch.
A pretty decent 40″ LCD TV, a PS3 we recently accidentally bought just cos they launched Grand Tourismo 5, a Wii that has served us well with many hours of Guitar Hero action, and an Astro B.yond box.
To be honest, I don’t watch a lot of TV. I have the Astro account mainly for sports and those learning/documentary channels (with occasional news.)
Minnesota Vikings, running back Adrian Peterson
The reason I don’t watch much TV is because I have a problem. A timing problem.
You see, some of my favorite sports shows on TV are played on the other side of the planet – USA.
The number one sports for me is NFL, check out the photo above with Minnesota Viking’s Adrian Peterson breaking a tackle. It is the ultimate team sports, with complex rules and crazy strategies and very different scoring system compared to other sports.
Astro usually plays the Monday Night game, which inconveniently also means that it falls on Tuesday morning in Malaysia, just the time I’m having coffee in front of the PC at office. I ended up missing a lot of games, and only watched one live Monday Night game with Vikings this season. I was on leave.
Live sports is all good, but sometimes I want to take away the “Live” part of it.
Man vs Wild – Bear Grylls
I’m also a Discovery Channel junkie, and one of my favorite shows has gotta be Man vs Wild. The photo above is Bear Grylls eating sashimi zebra (I probably won’t recommend you trying it). Each episod, this dude dropped at some god forsaken remote place, and his task is to get to civilization. He’s got a bottle of water, fire stone, knife, and whatever he’s wearing.
A show about survival skill, and loads of very interesting things this guy came up with to stay alive and get out of some pretty daunting situations. One episod he’s dropped in the middle of a dessert, another he’s at some jungle in Amazon, or some place in Iceland. Amazing stuff, watch it!
The problem is, the show is aired on 8:05 every Wednesday. That collides with dinner time…
I want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. Take charge of my own TV, which is why I got myself the Astro PVR.
The good news is, you can have it too!
Astro is giving 10 reviewers one whole year’s worth of subscription for recording service and the Astro B.yond PVR set. Furthermore, the grand price winner gets a 3 day 2 night luxury trip for two to Sutera Habour at Kota Kinabalu. (I’ve been to the lobby of that resort and it was beaauuuutiful!)
To participate, the chosen bloggers just have to do the following
Of course, you also need an Astro account at home to qualify.
Judging is based on creativity, effort (number of posts/updates), and level of engagement (get your friends to comment!).
Sounds like a plan to me, what about you?
p/s: follow @astroonline on twitter and check out facebook.com/Astro too.
For this x’mas, I actually made a little rearrangement on my living halls at home. Switched the foosball table to the second hall and swapped in the sofa and entertainment cabinet to the first hall so to better able enjoy the beautiful wall painting done by Haze.
the living room is a work of art, isn’t it?
Everything was pretty much in place: a little disco ball on the tea table by the sofa, the TV on the entertainment cabinet with my DVD player, surround speakers, Nintendo Wii, and of course, the faithful Astro decoder.
Then I noticed something that is not quite right. Zooming in a little, the Ikea TV cabinet that I bought is now actually deformed due to the weight of my old school 29″ TV, and this is despite the cabinet having a support beam at the center. I think it is a disaster waiting to happen, very tragic!
gahhh! TV cabinet cannot support the weight of my old 29″ TV
Ever the optimist, I see that this is merely a calling for me to upgrade to something lighter, something more modern. Like a sexy new 32″ LCD TV perhaps.
To be frank, I’ve been scouting for an LCD TV ever since they became somewhat affordable, but there was one reason that prevents me from taking the plunge – the lack of HD content. The gaming console that I have at home is a Wii, which basically plays on SDTV (standard definition TV), and there isn’t any HDTV content via Astro … until now.
Enter Astro B.yond – the multi-phased service from Astro starting with the first ever HD broadcast in Malaysia. There are 5 HD channels to start with – Astro SuperSports HD (831), ESPN HD (832, in January 2010), HBO HD (431), National Geographic Channel HD (573), and HD History (575).
Astro SuperSport will be showing the upcoming FIFA world cup games in HD, while ESPN HD actually plays quite a lot of NFL games! This is actually very very tempting for me personally!
More than mere HD content, Astro B.yond comes with a new B.yond box, new smart card, outdoor unit, HDMI cable, and new remote. All these is necessary by design, as the hardware will eventually allow the roll out of video recording through external hard disk in 2010, and in the next 24 hours, functions such as video on demand, and IPTV connectivity will follow.
This is actually quite exciting! To sign up for the service, just go to www.astro.com.my/byond or call the ASTRO customer Hotline 1300 82 3838. For RM 20 per month with a 12 month commitment, you get all these new channels in HD, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal.
In conjunction with the launch, there’ll also be an Astro B.yond Bloggers Night Out on the 13th of January 2010. To participate, all you need to do is be a fan at Astro’s facebook page and find out more details there. There’ll be announcements on the page, and an on-ground “Murder Mystery Game” with the winner winning a HD TV.
Those who attend and blog about the event will stand a chance to win a HD TV too, and Astro B.yond subscription until Dec 2010 (2 to be won, I hope I’ll be one of them!)
