Dammit, now I’ll never see Star World again…oh well, just another excuse to go back to the Phillipines for CNY. Maybe for both weeks just to catch two episodes of Monk.
:mrgreen:
How’s this for form? I get home for lunch today to find about 50 channels missing!! No HBO, Cinemax, Star Movies! I still have star world, CNN. Plus the channels only go up to 69 
I’m also sick of them changing and moving channels every few months, what’s the purpose?!?!
Found several channels missing as well, though at the top of some channels they tell you where they moved them to and when you’ll see them again, for me it’s like January 13. They better put them all back!
As written in my last post right after New Year Hallmark disappeared. This morning almost all channels where changed. Had to scan all to figure out where sits what. Anyway, I found all but Hallmark, and possibly CNN is on the whole day now on Ch 97.
Let’s wait and see, because as has happened before a few days later they rearranged them again.
You’ve done something to your TV set. Switch modes by going into the controls.
The damn sons of bitches took away Star World too, it disappeared today when I went to watch the Simpsons. I called them and they said it won’t be back! WTF! Anyone have a phone number to whoever the ass hole company is who makes these decisions?
I don’t have cable on my TV, but didn’t someone post earlier that Star World has no Chinese subtitles? If that’s the case, I’m surprised they ever bothered with it – it surely couldn’t have been very popular. The cable companies are only giving the customers what they want – home shopping, crap local news and game shows, historical soap operas and kung fu puppets.
I wouldn’t have thought foreign subscribers would comprise a noticeable demographic.
I remember about 10 years ago or so when we had cable and my wife complained about missing channels. The cable company said they’d had more than 400 phone calls about the missing kung fu puppets and just seven about some missing foreign channel. The puppets were back in a matter of days.
Yeah, but as much as I think the puppets are cool, they can’t do the scripts from Monk or Titus. As popular as this thread is, you’d think there were enough people out there who would demand to have Star World back. Maybe if we offer to let them pirate commercial airtime for furniture and hotel adverts, they’ll comply.
Well, down here, we only have CNN once in a while.
The only western TV down here, is the movie channels, National Geographic, discovery and Knowledge Channel.
I would not mind having star world and CNN all the time.
Someone ought to translate the fighting puppet shows. I am sure they would attract a cult following if they showed it on Channel four in UK - or something!
i got all my cable tv problems solved when they cut me off for lack of payment a year or so back. yeah, nantaoyuan cable is terrible, but they might retain some clients if they would at least send out a bill before they cut-off services. i only had service up for a month or so after paying the 3000 installation fee when they whacked me. of course, to get service back they wanted another 3000. yeah, right, sure.
you ain’t gonna get anywhere trying to be polite with the mob. shame em. like it can get anyworse? contact that young woman who does foreigner interest stories in the local press. sell her the angle that taiwan’s dearth of cable variety reflects badly on taiwan’s international image (well, it does) and hampers the development of international perspective. one of the small things i love about my little PI love shack village is the seemingly huge variety of cable on offer. if i ever get tired of watching the chickens or cutting my fingers opening cocconuts the cable is a great diversion. they got this indian movie station that shows the most wonderfully indian films(not to mention all the stars, cnn, bbc, fox and many more and even mainland china CCTV- gasp). indian films are great;everybody wholesome and dancing…addictive stuff. yeah, poor “black”, “lazy” PI has a much greater cable variety than the green silicon island of taiwan. is it possible that access to international opinion broadens one perspective? and it is to be extrapolated that the lack of international perspective evident by subscribers of the cable industry maybe be reflected by this “frog in the well” mentality?
all together now: “you think too much!”
Well, I wonder what all the fuss was about with the digital cable in Taiwan.
Why do they actually need digital cable anyway? To watch puppet shows? Or to watch a barking dog on the TV news?
In the UK there is digital terestial TV (30 channels), digital Cable and Satelite TV (200-something channels) you only pay for the channels you want, and if they can fit a couple of Indian and Chinese channels (by and for Chinese people, even the ads are in Chinese for British products), then maybe they can find room for Star World and CNN, hang on, who I am trying to kid ? 
they’ll just double the amount of dubbed soap operas and japanese channels.
My cable isn’t too bad. I always get CNN, Hallmark, National Geographic, Discover, etc, but still would love to be able to get Star World. Whenever I make a trip to Hong Kong, I always am a bit envious of the variety of channels available. Would anyone here happen to know if it’s possible to buy a satellite system in HK and set it up here in Taiwan? I suppose then I would need a PAL capable TV though as well right?
Thanks,
Amy
[quote=“bottleneck”]Well, I wonder what all the fuss was about with the digital cable in Taiwan.
Why do they actually need digital cable anyway? To watch puppet shows? Or to watch a barking dog on the TV news?[/quote]
cause Digital can support interactive, and in theory reduce piracy. Also it would force the whole system to be regualted better. By regulated better, cable companies would have to report their real subscription and not lower numbers
In Taiwan there is no incentive for most people to go Digital. Why cause it costs more than Analog to subscbibe to, and since all content is home grown here, there is no desire to go out and purchase digital, to get a couple of foreign channels
If the government, as happens in other countries, subsidized the change over to digital, then the digital providers could start up to market and sell the service. For the digital providers, this is a huge cash layout to set up the headend equipment and all the Subscriber management system for this, not to mention buying the rights to the contents. Digital providers are thus slow to provide a wider variety of interactivity ( banking email etc) when they do not see people buying into it. People then don’t want to buy into it when all they are getting is the same 90 channels they are getting from analog cable.
Then you have got all these cable operators in Taiwan with the “guan xi” going with the GIO. Going Digital would put them out of business.
The only thing that could transform the situation is for the digital operators to buy exclusive rights to transmit all content in Taiwan ( I do not know if this legally can be done and would cost a tone of money). Then they could set a deadline and simply switch off the analog service. Then everyone would have to go to digital
Some minor correction: going digital is a HUGE advantage for the operator since they can use the available bandwith more efficiently. Read: just squezze more channels into it which of course comes at the cost of quality - but “who cares” if you have no choice!?
I had subscribed to digital (satellite) TV services in Malaysia and the quality was VCD like, often the color resolution was poor (imagine looking at a photograph with 16 colors only) and pixelation was common.
And the choice wasn’t much better what we have here, in fact the English channels were the same but also censored.
BTW: I did ask if the same satellite covers Taiwan, too, but unfortunately it doesn’t …
Some minor correction: going digital is a HUGE advantage for the operator since they can use the available bandwith more efficiently. Read: just squezze more channels into it which of course comes at the cost of quality - but “who cares” if you have no choice!?
I had subscribed to digital (satellite) TV services in Malaysia and the quality was VCD like, often the color resolution was poor (imagine looking at a photograph with 16 colors only) and pixelation was common.
And the choice wasn’t much better what we have here, in fact the English channels were the same but also censored.
BTW: I did ask if the same satellite covers Taiwan, too, but unfortunately it doesn’t …[/quote]
you never know… you might still get it, eventhough the footprint is probabily covering just Malaysia.
It is possible albeit with a 2M dish to pick up the Thai sat signal that covers Thailand as Taiwan is on the peripheral of the foot print, although if it is raining or very cloudy you cannot get any signal as the signal strength is so low
On digitial TV, yes of course ou have the possibility of sending more channels down the stream, although with BSB in the UK and in Ireland, about 90% of these channels are crap(well that is what I think)
For sporting events you can send better resolution and chew up the bandwidth, although in Asia with sporting events, they seem to be scrooges with allocating bandwidth for sporting tournaments
HDTV is pretty impressive too, but again uses more bandwidth.
On the otherhand, if you are used to the quality on your TV, even it is poor, I think your brain compensates, and cannot appreciate the benefit of digital without physically comparing digital and analog on two different TVs (one TV with digital, one TV with analog)
Star World won’t be back on the analog service. Star TV who own Star World, have a stake in one of the digtial operators in Taiwan. It is now only available on the digital service.
Therefore to see Star World you need to subscibe to the digital service. A smart move on their part. Now if they could only do that with all the 100 channels available on the anlaog service
I asked a friend working for the broadcasting company, they say it definetely does not cover Taiwan.
Even though it would, a 2m dish is not really practical for a normal household …