maamoot

when you have to cater for the lowest common denominator what do you expect ? It's a Thai run service for Thais. They do not complain as they are brainwashed into not doing so hence the better educated Thais rip them off i.e. many many repeats. Don't complain about the service as they are only suppling it at a level to meet such low aspirations.

I don't think that you can get Astro here in Chiang Mai , but I do think that they have HDTV though .

Refering to the picture quality of the French Open , yes it is an excellent quality picture but so are many of the programmes that they get from the ASN feed .

What I don't understand is why they have live sports that they can and do show from ASN on the sports hdtv channel , but then they cut them off half way thru a live game and then show the French Open for the third time in that same day from a week earlier .

So far the sports they are airing are in great quality , thats not the problem , the problem is the morons in the programming department that decide to air the same show over and over and over again while there is live sports going on that they have the rights to show .

The mind boggles .

Admittedly True sucks. Totally overpriced too. I don't agree with your assumptions though. Thai or not Thai has nothing to do with it. They get away with it because of their monopoly on the EPL and other things. In order to improve True, you'd have to outlaw exclusive per-country rights. But since not even western governments have figured this out, it's not gonna happen in Thailand either. The only reason I and most other people got HD is the world cup.

Maybe they keep showing the FO because it's really excellent quality? I noticed that HBO HD is nowhere near as good in terms of picture quality. Anyway you can bet the World Cup 2010 production will be as good as it can be at 1080i.

I don't suppose Astro is HD? Impossible to go back once you go HD. This is like black and white TV vs Color.

Who the hel_l are the monkeys in charge of programming at True visions ? Just how many times do we have to watch the French Tennis Open ? 3 times a day of replays of a week old event ! And to add insult to injury they pre-empt the NHL championship deciding game between Chicago and Philadelphia to show for the third time , "thats the third time today I mean ".

I signed up for the HDTV but so far the pretty much means tennis 2o hours a day which interupts all other programming even though it ended over a week ago .

This is a heads up to any other poor bastards that are thinking about ordering this crap service , true has no idea how to run a company and are completely without a clue , and I know this is not news to most of us , but save your money and avoid true like the plague .

I think what True needs to realise is that whilst Thai is the national language and therefore it's appropriate that they should broadcast in Thai, Thai language speakers are in the minority worldwide and in Thailand there are nationalities from around the world who do not speak Thai.

True advertise their products in English speaking newspapers in Thailand and I would have thought it would be appropriate for them to mention the fact that whilst they advertise the service in English language newspapers they fail to mention the fact that they are not providing an English soundtrack, after all they mention just about every thing else in the ads terms and conditions.

Whether True like it or not English is an international language and most people around the world, where English is not the first Language, use English as their second language. True offer dual a language facility on many of their out dated movies but not on a world wide event such as The Football Worl Cup.

True have already shown their contempt by the cancellation of BBC Entertainment and do not seem bothered by the ensuing cancellations of premium subscribers. I think I have to accept that True are not interested in any customers other than Thai customers and despite the fact that they do actually employ expat staff they have no interest in becoming a truly international company.

Good post.

Does anyone remember the old days when Channels 3, 7 and 9 carried the English language sound tracks of movies on FM radio?

Back in the 70's there was only Thai TV but at least the local channels had enough decency to go out of their way to provide original soundtracks to televised movies and foreign series for the foreigners who lived here.

To me it was God send:

OK, it probably didn't cost that much to set up the service, but it cost something and it had to be managed and technicians needed to be employed to do the work and in those days the TV channels had very limited budgets.

Yet they cared enough to provide the service, even though if they hadn't, no one would have complained and it would have made no difference to their audience 99.99% of whom were Thai.

What has happened to Thailand where it seems that not only do businesses don't care, IMHO they actually get a kick out of sticking their thumbs up at non Thais?.

I'm very sorry to say this, but increasingly it seems to be true. (AHG !!! that word again!!)

Agreed.

With what you say about how Thai terrestrial TV used to go the extra mile, it's a shame that they, as well as True, now don't really seem to care about us.

Would love to know the figures of how much they save by not opting for English, and also love to know their official reasoning - is it really simply that they don't deem it worth it?

Ya I would love to know as well how much money they are saving by not having english commentary .

What we need in Thailand is competion for true visions as this really is the only way that they will change . They really are a piss poor excuse for a company .

Why do True continue to advertise their World Cup HD package in English language newspapers with a ton of conditions but leave out the fact that their is no English soundtrack?

Because they are scum that have zero interest in treating customers in an ethical way .

Remember the golden rule in Thailand , you will never ever ever get the same answer from different people that work for the same company .

When you ask a question here about any product or service said company may be offering the answer that you will receive has nothing to do with reality . Do what ever research you can do on the internet ( avoid Thai sites as the golden rule applies here as well )

Just wrote to UBC informing them that I will be canceling my HDTV . Went to watch the NHL Stanley Cup finals being played live right now but they are showing a replay of the French Tennis Open instead . They showed most of the playoffs up until now but then they don't show the finals . this along with the fact that they lied about the World cup being in English makes it pretty easy to cancel this piss poor service .

You can listen to BBC radio on the iplayer just not watch tv.

We've already gone over this in this thread, and i thought it was established and agreed that outside of the UK, you can not listen to the radio either.

I am aware of what you have established and agreed, however I am in Thailand and am currently listening to radio 2 on the BBC iplayer.

Why do some people always say they are right when they quite clearly don't know?

I don't think he said that you can not listen to BBC radio or any other internet radio , what I think he was saying is that they will not broadcast the world cup on the internet , period .

You can listen to BBC radio on the iplayer just not watch tv.

We've already gone over this in this thread, and i thought it was established and agreed that outside of the UK, you can not listen to the radio either.

Not even thru a proxy server ?

Until there is 3D material to watch, forget it.

Let's face it most of the TV programmes have not even reached wide screen format 16:9

let alone real HD...............

3D is a long way behind that.

Which tv show are you refering to when you say " most of the tv shows .." ?

American ? British ? or tv shows that they broadcast here on UBC ?

Welcome to Thailand! Don't take it personally, it says more about them than it does you. Most farangs here have a superior attitude and think they are better than anyone else because they have been looked up to by locals for so long that they forget the losers they really were before they exiled themselves here.

you took the words from my mouth. on top of that the favourite pastime of many losers is to whine, whinge and criticise each and everything in thai culture, tradition, behaviour or anything which does not conform with their (often) extremely narrow minded views.

Perfect !!!!

Just a heads up , something I just figured out , but maybe obvious to others .

Watching the French tennis open , the audio was in Thai . I had the settings set to English audio but it was still in Thai .

If anyone else is having the same problem , there is a button on the very bottom of the remote , second from the left that has a little speaker icon on it . If you push this button a little audio window comes up with one Thai selection and two English selections , pick the middle English selection and the commentary will change back to English .

Fantastic picture from the open as well !

Even easier if you set up English as your default language for all channels.

Sorry I should have mentioned that I had the settings set to English . Oh wait I minute , I did say that lol .

Sorry. I should have read your post more carefully. If English is your default language it's weird that you should need to manually change the audio. Must be something amiss in the system.

No problem , for some reason , on my unit anyways and I assume on all these models , going into the main menu and changing the language does not change the language on the hdtv channels (well the sports channel anyways, have not had the option on the HBOHD) .

I can go into the main menu and change the language to Thai but it will not change the language on the hd sports channel . It will however change the language on the sdtv channels

Thats why I mentioned it here as it is not intuitive at all .

Just a heads up , something I just figured out , but maybe obvious to others .

Watching the French tennis open , the audio was in Thai . I had the settings set to English audio but it was still in Thai .

If anyone else is having the same problem , there is a button on the very bottom of the remote , second from the left that has a little speaker icon on it . If you push this button a little audio window comes up with one Thai selection and two English selections , pick the middle English selection and the commentary will change back to English .

Fantastic picture from the open as well !

Even easier if you set up English as your default language for all channels.

Sorry I should have mentioned that I had the settings set to English . Oh wait I minute , I did say that lol .

Here is a huge wild pig taken by a boy with a hand gun;

I thought that this was hog wash and here is the truth lol

http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-jou...-updates-45.php

Just a heads up , something I just figured out , but maybe obvious to others .

Watching the French tennis open , the audio was in Thai . I had the settings set to English audio but it was still in Thai .

If anyone else is having the same problem , there is a button on the very bottom of the remote , second from the left that has a little speaker icon on it . If you push this button a little audio window comes up with one Thai selection and two English selections , pick the middle English selection and the commentary will change back to English .

Fantastic picture from the open as well !

Had the HDTV installed 2 days ago here in Chiang Mai . So far the sports channel picture is pretty much perfect , but the HBO HD channel is crap most of the time . About 90 % of the movies they are showing are stretched versions of the movie they are showing on reg hbo . The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was in hi def and in the correct aspect ratio but every other movie that I have seen so far has being a sdtv pic stretched to fit .

I don't speak Thai well enough to contact true visions and then wind up talking to a "tech " who is less informed about the service they are offering than I am .

But it seems to me that somebody has screwed up somewhere .

The sports channel looks great though so far and that is pretty much all I am interested in as I download most of what I want to watch from rapidshare or the like in hi def .

A 10 year old boy shot dead today.

The Thai Armies have Cross too many lines to go back.

The Thai Government has now become a Rouge Nation.

The Chinese Government in their worst day never Opened Fire on a Crowd of Protestors.

Sure they beat people to death with Clubs, but never have they SHOT 10 Year Old Children and Elderly WOmen.

The Thai Government has become a Rouge Nation.

The Chinese government never opened fire on a crowd of protesters? Are you insane? Have you not heard of the Tienanmen square massacre? The Xinjiang riots? I could go on but you're either some Chinese revisionist history believing nut or completely ignorant. If this situation were happening in China or most any other country the death toll would be a hel_l of a lot higher.

Could not have put it better myself

And I assume he meant "ROGUE" Nation

Does that mean it is actually happening?

Yep , some people already have it .

From what I could understand, True would begin offering sometime in 2008 (I heard different answers from different people, but anywhere from late spring to the end of the year).

Expect it sometime around 2010 then.

Prophetic

For you out there that have already invested in True HD, can you please keep us informed about the service once you have it up and running.

I believe True will be installing the service this month . . . . . . but I cant confirm that 100%

Thank you

IW

Got it on Thursday. There has not been any live sport to view yet to check quality, but the hbo channel is a vast improvement on the standard true hbo channel

They are showing ice hockey on the sports channel at the mo, and the quality is very good

Real test is Sunday nights premier league football live

Just curious , which NHL game was on ? I was hoping to get hdtv here in Chiang Mai before the playoffs were over but I don't think that is going to happen

I bought a Full HD Samsung 40" LCD from Siam Electronics in Chiang Mai a little while ago for 22,500 (got a 10% discount from 25,000 for paying by credit card - beats me why!). You need to shop around to get a good Full HD TV around your budget but it can be done. I almost bought a 32", but I am now so glad I went for the bigger TV. It's especially good for playing games on the Wii. I am extremely happy with my Samsung, but the LGs are also excellent TVs. Sony are overpriced in my opinion and all Bravias are not the same - a lot of models are very poor...

..and the USB input is a good idea. As far as I'm aware the Samsungs don't have them, but LG mostly do. However, in most cases on the LG they are on the back so not particularly convenient to use depending on the location of your TV. I simply have my Samsung paired with a Phillips DVD player that plays all file formats including AVI (DivX) and it has a USB slot conveniently located on the front. Problem solved for all of my media needs for 2,500 Baht... Oh, I also have my PC connected to the TV via a DVI to HDMI lead so I can stream stuff straight off the computer if I want - this is the only way to show true Full HD stuff unless you have a BluRay player, and I've no intention of buying one of them in the near future.

The newer model Samsungs have usb in as well as Lg . Some of the new Samsung TV's also support MKV files . Some Lg bluray players support MKV out of the box and apparently the Samsung players will support MKV with a new firmware update . If you do update the firmware make sure you download the update to a cd or flash drive and then install , don't install directly from the net to the player because if the internet connection goes tits up while update your new bluray could turn into a useful boat anchor .

Got mine installed yesterday, Truesport HD looks pretty good with the US feeds, sadly HBO HD doesn't look quite as sharp especially with older movies. It can't come close to even 720p downloads and can't hold a candle to blu-ray.

Quite an improvement over the normal picture quality though. Even the other non-HD channels look a little fresher.

The decoder can be set to output 576i/720p/1080i so can be used with all TVs. It has component, HDMI, optical audio, ethernet and USB ports in the back.

Can you hook up a usb hard drive with the decoder and record ? and if not I wonder what the usb is for ?

Has anyone actually had HDTV hooked up here in Thailand and if so what do you think so far ?

I download everything that I want to watch from the internet in HDTV and bluray quality . Why bother with the crap that true sends out .

However I will try out the new hdtv that truvisions is selling but only for the sports channel .

If u have a 6 month old plasma , u already have an hdtv !

I would update the firmware on the external media player that you are using first , if you have not already done that .

Also some of the new bluray players support MKV , you can put the mkv file on a dvd and play it in the bluray player , or you can plug your external hard drive into the bluray thru the usb and play them that way .

This might be an option if you cannot get the external media player that you are using now to support the mkv .

If you do decide to go the bluray player route make sure that you get one that has mkv support , bring the external hard drive that you own to the dealer loaded with some mkv's and make sure that will play . I know that the newer samsung's will play mkvs as well as some newer lg bluray players as well .

Good luck