Where To Buy Something To Watch Astro In Bangkok?

[gkinbkk]

^what always puzzles me is the people that ditch True for Astro when they're paying more and not getting as many channels.

We pay 300b a month for Astro. The programming is marginally better but the rugby coverage is a little worse giving that Astro only broadcast Setanta programming blocks rather than the full Setanta channel. Wife loves Asian Food Channel(not on True) and TLC which is an additional extra on True, like the Disney channels.

I would happily switch back to True IF they improved the SD picture quality, got serious about HD and offered the service at a reasonable price. Having lived in both Australia and Singapore I can easily say that both countries had better and cheaper pay TV offerings

[apetley]

Am I right in thinking that Astro and True are on different satellites at different positions?

Yes, True is on Thaicom5 at 78.5°E. Astro is on Measat at 91.5°E

Can I just re-align my True Ku band dish to point to the Astro satellite and receive Astro if I have the right box?

Not unless you have a valid Astro card that's paired with the box, and then there's also the footprint issue.

I'm still puzzled about the footprint issue myself because the Measat 3 Ku band footprint maps I've seen on www.measat.com/satellite_91e_measat3_ku.html, show their Ku footprint hardly extending into Thailand at all, so pulling that Astro Ku signal in from Bangkok would appear to need an outsize Ku dish. I'd like to know how the shops that are selling Astro packages in Bangkok get over that. Or are they perhaps selling kits to be taken back to Malaysia and installed there?? Doesn't make any sense to me at the 31.565 Baht price people have quoted. Can anyone clarify, please?

I initially used an old 90 cm true dish to receive the KU astro signal. It was fine and I live just north of Kanchanaburi. I later used a 6 ft mesh dish which gave a marginally better signal.

Rain outages which are slightly worse than true will hopefully be improved by the 1.2 metre solid dish I'm having installed in a couple of days.

Had the 1.2 m dish for just over a week now and it's quite an improvement.

2700 bht from 9sat in bkk.

Gives about a 10% better signal which translates to much less rain related interruptions.

Very happy so far.

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[ClareQuilty]

I'm up here in Isaan, and after trying for a week or two, so far have had no luck ordering any satellite - no one can communicate with me at the 'True' office, and they don't seem to want to sell to a foreigner. However Thai acquaintances who have satellite say that they just pay one time to buy the equipment and then no monthly fee - however they have no idea if they get any English language channels.