zzSleepyJohn

......If you cannot do that, it's back to square one and start all over again.....

Well thanks for the replies, but oh dear, is it really as bad as all that? Sadly no, I can't see me getting back to Thailand before those shortened validities expire. I had thought, but perhaps somewhat naïvely from what you're saying, that the validity shortening in my old passport was purely a minor administative matter that could easily be corrected by any immigration once they saw my new passport.

I have a consecutive string of annual retirement visas in my old passport going back to 2003, and I remember there used to be merit in keeping them consecutive like that, but I suspect that merit has disappeared now.

If I do have to start all over again, I wonder if MaeSai will be able to dig out some of my old details when I apply again. I can remember one immigration officer actually coming to our residence about 12 years ago to check me out and see if I was a fine upstanding member of the community at the time. I may not be quite so upstanding these days as I was then!

I have a retirement visa and multiple re-entry permit both normally valid for one-year and both issued in March 2010 stamped in my old passport, but because that old passport was going to expire in Sept 2010, the immigration office in MaeSai shortened the validity of both the retirement visa and the re-entry permit to 6 months to coincide with the date my passport was going to expire.

OK, so now I'm overseas where I've got myself a brand new clean passport with nothing stamped in it at all, and I also have my old cancelled passport with the original annual retirement visa and re-entry permits available to show.

On the face of it, I would expect to be able to show the stamps in my old passport to Thai immigration when I arrive back in Thailand and hopefully they will let me in until March 2011 which is the date when my annual retirement visa expires. Or I suppose they might just give me a 30 day tourist stamp and tell me to go to MaeSai to sort it out. Either of these possibilities would be OK.

But I'm worried on two possible scores:

1. When I return to Thailand, it will be within the original 12 month validity of my visa and re-entry pemit,

but it will be after the September 2010 expiry date now showing in my old passport, so it will appear as

if they have both expired.

2. I plan to return to Thailand on a one-way ticket, and it may be hard to convince the airline check-in

staff to let me board because they have rules saying travellers must either have a return ticket or be

able to show some kind of residence permit for Thailand.

Not sure if I'm worrying unnecessarily on these two points, or if I ought to try and sort it out somehow, before I travel back to Thailand.

What do you think? Any suggestions? Any similar experiences?

The only place you will find HD is on satellte, even then the channels are few and far betwwen

and will certainly need a subscription and card.

I'd agree they're few and far between, but of those, some of are actually listed as FTA, so if the lists are correct, it should be possible to see something without a subscription card. See my recently compiled attached list .

But I don't know where to get an HD decoder, or where to see any kind of demo before buying this gear in Thailand. Any ideas, anyone?

HiDef.doc

Hi again, I'd like to take a step back from previous posts on here if I may, and ask opinions about whether buying a new 16:9 LCD TV here in Thailand can be justified for better picture quality if the only source is going to be satellite, not DVD or BluRay.

Out in the Asian skies, there do now seem to be a variety of higher quality picture sources available, and I'm attaching a table that I've compiled. As you may see, some are true MPEG4 HD that would require a special new MPEG4 satbox to view, and there are a variety of other formats like MPEG2/HD (not really sure what kind of satbox that would need) and some that fill all their 720 x 576 pixels when they send 16 X 9 instead of transmitting black pixels at the top and bottom of 4:3 format like most others do.

Choice of content on that table isn't brilliant, I know, but considering recent listings are showing quite a few as FTA, I still find them quite interesting. Particularly those on Vinasat, I thought, whose footprint spills over to nearly all of Thailand with only a small dish.

I'm presently watching on a 7-year-old 21" 4:3 TV via RCA AV leads from my old satboxes, and some channels do show up quite sharp and clear. I just don't know how much better they would look on a new 16:9 TV and new satbox with a HDMi connection. I don't want to end up simply enlarging grain and fuzziness, or just with stretched fat faces because of wrong aspect ratio. We see plenty of examples of that around

Lots of people seem to be going in for new 16:9 LCD and LED backlight TVs these days, and I'd like to join the club if one would give me real quality gain on satellite. Ideally, I reckon I need a demo to see what one of these can do with the satellite sources on my list, but the stores only seem to have DVD and BluRay sources to show, and they look completely dumb when I ask about satellite!

Anyone got any further thoughts or suggestions to offer?

HiDef.doc

On an old Dynasat box, that AsiaSat Deutsche Welle 16:9 fills the height of my 4:3 TV and the extra transmitted width is squashed into my width so that I see matchstick characters. Same effect with the Dutch BVN channel on Thaicom and with the SD display of Luxe TV on Asiasat 5. NB: Luxe TV is also broadcast in MPEG4 HD which none of my satboxes can display.

On my slightly more modern box, instead of squashed width and matchstick characters, I'm given two choices, both of which preserve a correct aspect ratio. One choice is "PanScan" where the height matches my screen height, and I lose part of picture off the left and right edges of my screen. The other choice is "letterbox" where the full width of the transmitted picture fits my screen width and I get blank at the top and bottom of my screen.

Only these three specific channels that I mention display like this. All the hundreds of others in the Asian skies display as standard 4:3 or as letterbox or pillarbox, depending on the source material.

The way 16:9 material can be carried on 720 x 576 pixels is all very nicely explained at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning

/tvbranding/picturesize.shtml

(Sorry this URL got mangled in my previous post so I'm trying splitting it into two halves which will need to be joined up again)

and I'm fairly confident that if Astral tried any one of those three 16:9 channels that I mention on his 40" Samsung, they would each exactly match his screen size and display with better resolution than BBC or any other channel putting letterbox out on 720 x 576.

But from what you're saying, it doesn't look as if just changing to an HDMI connection on its own is going to magically improve quality much.

On a visit to friends in Norway last summer, I was blown away by the high quality of BBC World News seen there. Admittedly it was being viewed on a paid encrypted Norwegian high definition bouquet of channels, but I would have thought it originated from the same source that we see BBC on here in Thailand, in other words 720 x 576 pixels. I can't imagine BBC having a special HD feed of World News specially for Europe, so ever since that visit, I've been trying to puzzle out how I could get the same result here in Thailand.

The BBC News channel uses 720x576 and is definitely a 16:9 ratio

as displayed by my Dreambox info screen......

Well yes, nearly! But not quite! The plot thickens a little here because BBC, unlike most other broadcasters, use 14:9 instead of 16:9 They call it Pillarbox format. If you're interested, this is all nicely explained at http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tvbrand...cturesize.shtml

.....The "always 16:9" setting shows 4:3 programmes in correct ratio with

black bars at either side of the screen

Correct, and you should find there are some thin black bars on either side when you display a BBC 14:9 image

that fills your height.

HDMI is probably best, but not really necessary for the present content on the channels.

This is what others are telling me too, but as I've been mentioning ad nauseam in a similar thread on the Chiangrai forum, it's not the same story as an acqaintance of mine tells me. He tells me that he's seen Thai TV displaying very very much better with an HDMI connection, so I'd really like to hear from someone else who has actually tried it.

Incidentally, a little off-topic, but I'm fascinated to hear you've got a Dreambox. Did you buy it in Thailand? I'm only just starting to discover what they are and what they can do. There's a tempting offer on http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.29102 at US$ 79 including worldwide shipping.

720x576 is a 4:3 image

720 (4) : 576 (3) Ratio. This is Pal.

Obviously I can't argue with your arithmetic there, but if you look on Asiasat 3S http://satcodx4.tele-satellite.com/1055/eng/ under 3.760 GHz H 26000, and compare the entries for TV5 (France) and DW-TV (Germany), you will see they are both 720x576 and MPEG2, but the former is listed as 4:3 while the latter is 16:9. Also my satbox displays them quite differently. DW-TV (and Dutch BVN on Thaicom 5) fill my 4:3 screen height even though the picture content is 16:9 and there's definitely something different with them, compared to the way TV5 and other channels display blank screen top and bottom when they're got 16:9 content.

So I'm still curious to know whether anyone's got a satbox equipped with HDMI and a 16:9 TV with HDMI, and tried connecting them. If so with what quality results?

I've posted a similar but slightly fuller reply to Benjie's same statement in the Chiangrai forum, so suggest we continue with any further comments about an HDMI to satbox connection over there.

...... I don't think there would be much noticable improvement,

That used to be my conclusion too, until an acquaintance told me they'd seen vastly improved quality on Thai TV when they'd tried HDMI, so now I want to see it for myself before I totally swallow my acquaintances' story. Hence my question whether anyone around Chiangrai here has an HDMI connector on their satbox and tried it.

720x576 is obviously a 4:3 image (PAL).

Obviously I can't argue with the arithmetic there, but if you look on Asiasat 3S http://satcodx4.tele-satellite.com/1055/eng/ under 3.760 GHz H 26000, and compare the entries for TV5 (France) and DW-TV (Germany), you will see they are both 720x576 and MPEG2, but the former is listed as 4:3 while the latter is 16:9. Also my satbox displays them quite differently. DW-TV (and Dutch BVN on Thaicom 5) fill my 4:3 screen height even though the picture content is 16:9 and there's definitely something different with them, compared to the way other channels display blank screen top and bottom when they're got 16:9 content.

So I'm still curious. I haven't got any satbox equipped with HDMI myself, nor have I got a 16:9 TV. Those two items are both waiting for each other like chicken & egg once I've seen for myself if my acquaintance's alleged big improvement is real.

720x576 is not a 16:9 format.

Probably best to wait until some HD channels appear as all HD is in 16:9.

SHouldn't this be moved to the Audio & video subsection?

DeutscheWelle on AsiaSat 3S is 720x576 and is 16:9. Similarly Dutch BVN on Thaicom 5 I believe. Those aren't MPEG4 HD, admittedly, but wouldn't they and the other 720x576 channels around benefit considerably from an HDMI connection? Othewise why would modern MPEG2 sat boxes be equipped with HDMI connectors at all?

Reason for specifically posting here on Chiangrai was to try and see if anyone locally in this area has hooked up with HDMI.

Do True/UBC boxes offer S-vid connections??

HDMI would be even better, if there were any broadcast sources in HD.

Last time I looked, there were only a couple of demo channels in HD MPEG4 on C-band free-to-air available in this area, but there are plenty of 720x576 signals in MPEG2 around, and I know of a couple in 16:9 (Deutsche Welle for example).

On MPEG2, wouldn't 720x576 and even 544x576 benefit considerably by using an HDMI instead of RCA? I've heard several complaints in the past that Thai TV looks worse on a big 16:9 screen than it does on an ordinary old TV because of graininess and lack of definition, but I've also heard (but never seen for myself) that even Thai TV looks good if you're hooked up with HDMI.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has hooked up their sat decoder to their new 16:9 TV with an HDMI connection and what sort of results they've got.

if you have fta receiver ( free to air) the latest ones have hdmi output

the format from the sats to the receiver is the same everywhere.

however I have not seen many fta dishes in use ( most I see in thailand have logo from pay services)

please inform me if I am wrong

I think there must be special new format on high definition satellite links, because none of my old receivers will lock into them even when I've set the frequency and symbol rate correctly.

There is some limited free-to-air on small ku-band dishes, but most of it comes on large C-band dishes. C-band sats have very much larger footprints so the selection of available programmes is Asia-wide and beyond. Whilst many of these transmit in 4:3 format with 544x576 pixels, there are now a few doing 16:9 and 720x576, so it's these latter that would benefit most from an HDMI cable connection.

What I've heard, though I've yet to see it demonstrated, is that even the Thai channels via UBC/True or via Thaicom C-band benefit greatly from an HDMI hookup, so that's why I'm interested to hear from anyone on here who's tried it. There were quite a few posts on here a few months ago saying how Thai TV looked worse on a new 16:9 TV than it had done on their old TV. They cited that their big new screen only served to emphasise grain and poor resolution from Thai TV. I'd like to find out whether that poor quality was really down to the Thai TV source, or to the way they were connecting their new TV to the satellite.

By the way, the logos you see on the ku-band dishes around here don't mean very much. It's which satellite they're pointed to that tells what they're doing.

Just wondering if anyone locally has a satellite decoder box with an HDMI connection and tried hooking up to a decent 16:9 TV with an HDMI cable.

I've heard that when people buy a new 16:9 TV and connect it to satellite by ordinary AV cables, the results on Thai TV are disappointing, but that with a proper HDMI cable and sat box, even Thai TV looks much much better. Then there are a few slightly higher than normal definition programmes and a couple of high def demo channels that you can get on a free-to-air C-band dish.

I'm not sure how easy it is to get a satellite decoder with an HDMI connection here these days, or whether they're affordable. I know in UK they've come down a lot in price and believe they're now available there for about £130. I even wondered about bringing one out here from there, but am not sure if they'd be compatible with transmissions in the Asian skies.

Anyone any experience with this at all?

I just subscribed (yesterday) to 3G with AIS in Chiang Mai to try how it works. Got the nokia e52 and connected via bluetooth with my laptop (easy with PC Suite from nokia). Mostly I am using it to check my e-mail directly on the phone.

The plans offered by AIS are per volume not time. I think if you are quite heavy internet user, 3G is still quite expensive. 100 baht/ 500 MB. This can be good for quick e-mail checking though. Don't really know how long will the package (500 MB) last. We'll see in couple of days

How much did it cost you? I already have a dongle (brought from UK and unlocked) and a 99 baht/month AIS GPRS/EDGE subscription. Presumably you had to buy yourself both a new simcard and that 500MB credit.

When I was in UK recently,I found with reasonably careful use that a £10 1GB PAYG top-up lasted me a month.

DTAC used to offer the choice of pre-paying either by time or by megabyte, and since the network was so slow, I always chose the megabyte option, but they've since discontinued that option so now you have to keep on paying while you're watching your pages failing to load I'm a little surprised to hear you can get megabyte credit again. Is this an indication that AIS have actually managed to speed things up?

..... 100% were gifted when they were talking about their own children, but far less than 5% when they were talking about the children of others).....

Ah yes! Sounds familiar!

Anyone else out there by any chance with a Thai and adult Asbie connection?

Are there any Aspies or people connected with Aspies out there?

They do not issue `own visa`s` for just ` a` country, that is highly unlikely because there are no borders in Europe, so you can go from one country to another without ever being checked.

Europe has for the most part become the `Schengen state`. Access to one country allows access to all countries under the Schengen treaty.

Google and they shall find....

Thanks for that confirmation, Carib. That's what I thought too.

I've now tried contacting the Norwegian embassy in London to see if they can do anything, but received a firm "no" saying that as a Thai, my wife can only apply in Bangkok.

All this seems to be bearing out what I said in my OP, that Schengen visas are now becoming very difficult to get.

Any other thoughts on the idea of us invoking the EC directive and going to one of the Schengen borders with no visa, only the wife's passport and marriage certificate and me?

Don't forget that apart from the "Schengen Visa" you can still apply for ordinary visitors

visa that are just valid for this country.

This might be less trouble.

That's an interesting suggestion, but I've never heard of an ordinary visitor's visa like that. Can you give more details? I thought for the Schengen States, it was a case of all or nothing.

Why not try and reapply at the French Embassy saying how much you love France and then just go to Norway.

It may be a case of the Norwegians not really wanting Asians into the country, or you have just hit a jobs worth person.

My partner has only had one Schgen Visa and she got that from French Embassy in Bangkok and it ws no problems.

Hmmm... yes, thanks for that, but the problem we have now is that I am in England while the wife is in Thailand, far from Bangkok, and unable to fill in forms in English (or French) by herself. She will soon travel to England on her UK visit visa, and the embassies in London will nowadays only grant visas to foreigners who have a permanent settlement visa in UK. That's why my thoughts have been turning towards the idea of trying to invoke Directive 2004/38/EC and going without any visa at all. Not sure if it would work, though, and I'm wondering if a) anyone else has tried it and which country would be safest.

....Italy?

Yeah? What makes you suggest Italy?

I have to ask because it's not exactly in a straight line towards the direction I'd ultimately be heading.

Hi, I'm a UK pensioner living partly in UK and partly in Thailand with my Thai wife who is also close to pensionable age. Wife has had several UK visitor visas over the years, and also three multiple entry Schengen visit visas in the past, two issued by the French embassy in London (incorrectly I now understand because she was was not settled in UK at the time) and a third by the French embassy in Bangkok, all three free of charge.

While I was in Thailand earlier this year, we received an invitation from some Norwegian friends to pop over and visit them for a fortnight whilst we were both in England, so as soon as my wife had her UK visit visa approved, she got all the documentation prepared and went to the Norwegian embassy in Bangkok to apply for a free Schengen visa so we could go over to Norway from UK for a couple of weeks. I had previously helped her with the preparation of these documents (because she can't read or write in English herself) and included a letter of guarantee and evidence of my funds, signed by myself, just as I had in the past when applying to the French embassy. As a bonus, we also included a proposed itinerary from Liverpool to Oslo Torp via Ryanair, an international travel insurance covering the period, and we arranged for our Norwegian friends to supply an invitiation form written in Norwegian and copies of pages from their passport. We added these even though the Application for Schengen Visa Form implied these extras were not strictly required because of a note on the form saying the questions marked with [*] do not have to be answered by family members of EU or EEA citizens.

All this was no good!

The Norwegian embassy found all kinds of problems with my wife's application and sent her away on two seperate occasions to get more documentation. All kinds of different rules were being applied; the visa wasn't going to be free because I wasn't living in Norway. My letter of guarantee was not acceptable for indeterminate reasons, and the questions marked [*] needed to be answered after all.

By this time, I'd left for UK and couldn't help with all these extra requirements, and my wife was totally fed up at having made special journeys to Bangkok from her far-distant provincial home, all for nothing. A request to set up a phonecall from our Norwegian hosts to the embassy in Bangkok to try and sort things out Norway-style, was refused by the embassy.

My conclusion: - It has become just "too difficult" to get a Schengen visa for a Thai wife. True or false?

OK, that's the background. Now to my questions:

According to Directive 2004/38/EC, a third country family member should not need any visa at all

provided they are accompanied by their EU citizen spouse. See

http://yedda.com/questions/schengen_visa_s..._7351421072162/

So, could this work? Has anyone tried it? Starting from UK, which Schengen State would it be safest to make as a first entry point? If I've understood it correctly, so long as we travel together and we can show my wife's passport as ID and our marriage cert, they should let us in. What d'you folks think?

Feel free to PM me if you have any info that you think might be sensitive.

You can't leave the secure area on transit.

Why not? The only people who can't leave are those who don't qualify for the visa waiver (simple stamp in passport) or a visa. Anyone else is free to leave, but of course you might have to re-check in and may have to pay the 700 THB departure tax.

Some people like myself, if they were coming back, might only have a single entry non-imm visa or re-entry visa for Thailand, and so wouldn't necessarily want to blow that on just a few hours' entry.

But I sympathise because unless you qualify to use a business or first class lounge, the transit area at Suvarnaphum is quite uncomfortable, especially compared to the old transit area in Don Muang.

.....im as bannork as my husband. money is a big factor ...

Good for you! I'm a bit of skinflint too, and last year I tried to do Morchit - Suvanaphum in the opposite direction by ordinary public buses. I arrived at Morchit by overnight bus from the North, on my own, heavily laden with suitcases for a 3-month stay in UK. I speak a little Thai but can't understand replies in Thai much. There was an enquiry counter at Morchit and they were able to tell me the bus number to catch for a start. It was a long trail around the back of Morchit to get to the first bus departure point and this was difficult with all my baggage. However I found the bus in the end and heaved my luggage on board. The driver and conductor were friendly and helpful, but it turned out two bus changes were required en route! After about half an hour on the first bus, the conductor spotted the next bus I needed and got the driver to overtake it and flag it down for me. I had to scramble off the bus with my bags and try and waddle quickly back to the next bus that had kindly stopped. It was all done with big smiles, though, and looking back it was an adventure and an excercise in indepndence that I wouldn't have missed. Far better than sitting in a taxi and paying ten times the fare! The next bus was just a short ride, and my change to the 3rd bus was more sedate than the 2nd. I arrived at Suvarnaphum a little exhausted, but alert and happy!

I really thought there would have been a minibus link between Morchit and Suvarnaphum, but if there is, I didn't manage to find it.

So if you have time, and a sense of adventure, and want to save on the taxi fare, it is possible by public buses, but not easy!

I normally live in Thailand with my Thai wife, but we plan to visit UK and Norway this summer so my Thai wife needs visas.

On previous visits we've never bothered with insurance, and no-one has ever asked, but now it seems the embassies are tightening up and need to see a certificate of medical cover before they'll issue a visa.

Anyone know if this is just smoke and mirrors, or has insurance now really become mandatory?

My wife does have long-standing life and medical insurance with Thai Life, but we're not getting much joy out of them when we ask them for a piece of paper certifying intenational cover that we can present to the embassies. They did mutter something about "if you show us your ticket and visa, we can provide the international cover for a limited period". But that's a classical chicken and egg scenario! Which comes first, the visa or the insurance?

Anyone got experience of obtaining insurance in Thailand to meet requirements for visa applications? My wife would need this cover for about 6 weeks. Can this be easily purchased over the counter in Bangkok (we're unfamiliar because we're living in Chiangrai), and if so how much is minimum cover likely to cost?

Update - I've just tried to see if I could get a symbol rate lock on the transponders for Voom HD on Measat 3 and for CCTVHiV on Chinasat6B, but failed in both cases. Seems that when HD channels have their own exclusive transponders, an ordinary SD decoder can't lock in on the symbol stream at all.

Anyone know of a satellite equipment supplier in Thailand who sells HD decoders? I'm basically looking for a price and demo.

I think you'll find that for ongoing monthly packages you have to be a resident with a registered address so that they can post a monthly bill to you. As a short-term tourist it would probably be difficult to satisfy this requirement. I've also heard that the ongoing monthly packages are hard to stop. I'm in Chiangrai and was told that to cancel I would have to physically travel to a regional centre in Chiangmai and present some documentary proof in person before I could cancel completely. If you just fail to pay your monthly bill without going through the proper cancellation procedure, you're still liable for that and any subsequent monthly bills they keep sending.