Boredworkers.com

For the past month or so, Astro has been broadcasting their plans to restructure the channel numbering. As of 1st October 2007, they’ve rolled over into the new numbering schema. I personally think it is screwed up and they could have done a better job. Granted that this feeling could just be a transition and tomorrow I might wake up enlightened, but as of this moment in time, I would really like to throttle the idiot who came up with the channel numbers.

My family have been a full package Astro subscriber for at least 8 years. While I’m not a couch potato (my viewing hours are limited to about a few hours a week), I have gotten familiar with all the channels. What that means is that I can channel surf with the best of them without having to think about the channel or its number before switching. The new numbers just threw me on a tail spin.

While they have been publicising the change and trying to make the transition as painless as possible, I can’t say that it was a good one. I myself felt the pain first hand when I dropped by my parent’s place last weekend and got totally lost trying to find the AXN and Discovery Real Time. As of today, I’ve managed to find AXN but Discovery is still elusive despite me having scrolled through all the channels one by one.

The major gripe I have with the new numbers is that they do not resemble the old numbers in any way. HBO which was previously 40 is now 411. Starworld which was previously 70 is now 711. For the life of me, I can’t see the relation between the old numbers and the new numbers. While their intentions were to group channels with similar genres together, they haven’t done a great job at it. For example, I see Astro HITZ.tv as an entertainment channel that is equivalent to MTV and Channel [V]. However, HITZ is grouped next to AXN while MTV is 10 numbers away with Star World. What’s up with that?

Maybe it’s me and I’m just dumb. Maybe I’m just thinking along the wrong lines. Personally, they could have just as easily renumbered the channels without having to really change the numbers at all.

For example, they could have moved HBO (40), Cinemax (41), and Star Movies (42) together by prepending a category number (say 4 for Movies) and change the numbers to 440, 441, and 442 respectively. That way, they can just say that the first number indicates the category and we only need to remember to add the number to existing channels. Remembering 10 category numbers is way better than remapping 50 channels that you’ve gotten used to since day one!

Granted that it will leave gaps in between the numbers, but they could easily fill them up or slowly renumber them later. Besides, it’s not as though the current channel numbers don’t have odd gaps in between them.

Anyway, for anyone out there who’s still lost about the channel numbers, here they are:
Original channel renumbering by Astro