Astro Byond PVR

We subscribed for the Astro Byond when it first came out. It was free to change the decoder and dish, and we only need to add on RM20 monthly fee to be able to watch certain channels in HD, namely the ones we subscribed were HBO HD, National Geographic HD, History HD, AXN HD. Recently, we also subscribed to Astro Byond PVR for an additional RM5 a month. This cool feature allows us to record Astro programmes and watch it later. They actually have 2 options:

1) We can opt to change the decoder again, to Astro Byond PVR, which we didn’t know about when we got the Astro Byond decoder, we thought that was the final version already. (so feels kinda cheated here). To get the Astro Byond PVR package, one has to pay another RM400 (for Astro customers ) or RM300 (for Astro Byond customers). It’s only free for Astro MAX existing customers. I personally think the pricing is quite extreme, coz I got my Astro Byond for free. There’s an additional RM10 fee for using this service.

2) So I opted for this more ‘economy’ solution, to use the Plug and Play and just purchase an external HDD. However, only one type of HDD works, which is the Western Digital My Passport AV 320gb. Just plug it into the USB port, and start recording immediately. The bad thing about this option is, you cannot watch another channel and record another channel. Due to this, I only set my PVR to record things in the middle of the night, and when I am not home, like during the day time. Works ok for me. I have not tried this, but I might be able to remove the HDD and playback the movies in a PC or something. Plus it’s only 320 gb compared the the PVR box with 500gb. But I really like to delete my shows after watching it, so that doesn’t affect me much.

Check out the Astro Byond PVR TV Advert...I think it’s really cute.