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Astro will go HD tomorrow. I was sitting in the car to office this morning when I heard the news on the radio that Astro will launch HD service tomorrow. Well, it’s just time, and just a very perfect time since I also just recently getting obsessed with HD World when purchasing my Sony Full HD LCD TV.

After the launch of Measat 3A satellite, Astro been quietly upgrading their system to support HD broadcast. Well, they are doing a good job of keeping that quite as I only get to know that today despite several articles on the local newspaper already about this.

From the digging that I do, I found out that the broadcast will be in 1080i resolution. What? I thought that it will be in 720p. 1080i can be thought as 540p, which is below 720p. There’s also interesting rumors about the new decoder as well. The new decoder will be eqquiped with HDMI port, ethernet port, usb port and digital audio output.

(Images via Miri Community Forum)

But I don’t see any HDMI port from the new decoder that comes with any new Astro subscription.

But seeing the USB port and Ethernet port at the back of the decoder rather excites me (current model only have phone jack port for the modem). Having USB port can mean that you can connect portable external hard disk to it, and use Astro decoder as PVR (Personal Video Recorder) to programatically the whole season of Akademi Fantasia (LOL!), and watch it at your own leisure time.

With broadband internet is now connectable to Astro decoder, I hope this will be first Malaysia version of TiVo. As a matter of fact, in the past I have touched twice about Malaysia version of TiVo. Firstly, when MiTV first launched, which MiTV turn out to be not close to TiVo at all, and the launched of Astro Max after that (which the production has been ceased now)

During the launch, only a few channels will be broadcast in HD. Which channels then? Measat website has a good hint for this.

Local programs will be in HD in the next phase as Astro has to upgrade the video camera and other equipments. I just can’t want to watch Akademi Fantasia in HD (LOL).

The 2 things that still have big question marks on them are, i) how much the new decoder will cost, ii) what’s the price will be for the HD channels package. Everything will be unveiled soon.

It’s time for me to reconsider upgrading my package which currently I’m under protest by switching to the basic RM37.95 package due to the price hike that they announce to the Sports Channel last time.

Astro website will definately be the first website that I’ll be visiting first thing tomorrow.

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When it only feels like yesterday that I first laid my hand on Gmail, there’s the next thing from Google which I believe will change how people look at communication and collaboration – Google Wave.

I get to know about Google Wave sometimes end of May 2009, which I straightly request an invitation. Google Wave was first made available to public on 30th of September. After patiently waiting for so long, finally I received invitation to preview Google Wave. Yippe!

Google Wave supported in Google Chrome, Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5 web browser. If you are using Internet Explorer, you need to install Google Chrome Frame first.

Well, this is my very first wave that I write in Google Wave. There’s just too much things to write about Google Wave features here. Just watch this video to get the idea about what Google Wave is.

The next thing that came to my mind is, will Google Wave works on iPhone? Well, not yet. But wait. There’s a link down there that asks me to go ahead if I want to continue accessing Google Wave at my own peril.

Surprisingly, Google Wave does load up on iPhone. Let’s look at the first wave that I wrote earlier.

Nice. It loads up too. But one thing that I noticed, it takes quite long to load, and my iPhone feels like freezing at a time. This is I guess when the faster processor of iPhone 3GS is required. At this very early stage, the Map Gadgets Extension is loadable on iPhone.

Lets view the welcome note wave that I got. Bummer! The YouTube video extensions is not loadable here.

“Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with”. I have 8 invitations that I can give out, which 2 have been reserved already. So, I have 6 invitations left to be given out now. If you are interested, just buzz me at the comment section. First come first basis.

Please remember to fill in your email when leaving the comment so that I can send you the invitation. No worries. The email that you left in the email field is not viewable by others.

Nov 16 2009, 4:38pm:
Sorry folks. All invitations were given out already.

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Been invited by a friend of mine, who is a teacher at Sekolah Kebangsaan Puchong Utama 3 to attend that Fiesta Ria held by the school. It’s been ages since I last attended this kind of event. As far as I remember, I was still in primary school that time when I last attended something like this,

Some of the crowd that we have today. Well, the theme for this kind of event is to bring the parents, student and teachers together. You see so many kinds and behaviours of kids at school, and the same goes to parents.

Let’s look at what they have here. As stated in the bunting, there’s inflatable playground.

Flying fox is quite popular too amongst the pupils here. There’s one kind after another, non stop that flying down the cable.

If you are thirsty or hungry, you can find drinks and foods almost everywhere.

And this game has received quite extraordinary attention from the crowd. It’s RM5 for 3 times throw. I wonder how much money that the teacher is making out of this ;)

And I guess the highlight of the day is the performance by Akhbar and Yasin.

Anyway, it’s kinda fun tough once in a while to break away from my normal norm of spending the weeked.

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It’s quite a shocking news today to receive an SMS from friend telling that Micheal Jackson has died. Hopefully it’s just not another chain SMS that always happened. Quickly checking several of mainstream news website, yeap, it is confirmed.

Well, I was really hoping to see him making a comeback in this industry, and now it’s all history. May he rest in peace.

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