Stay up to date with Astro's Catch Up

We are just days away from getting the fourth season of Game of Thrones (GoT) on Astro. If you have not watched the other three seasons, you don’t have to panic yet.

Astro’s Catch Up TV feature will allow you to watch the past seasons on your smartphone or tablet. Even if you have been following the show faithfully, chances are you would have forgotten a character or two by now and it’s worth checking out to refresh your memory.

This feature, which is part of its On-The-Go (OTG) offering, also allows users to stream most popular episodes that have been aired by Astro such as True Detective.

“Our customers demand access to their entertainment wherever they go and don’t want to be limited to when they are in front of their TVs,” said Brian Lenz, Astro’s chief innovation officer.

“People are also increasingly spending more of their time watching videos on their mobile devices like their smartphones and tablets thanks to higher adoption rate of such devices. Since OTG’s introduction in May 2012, we have continually made improvements and added new features to the service."

Apart from catching up on shows, OTG lets viewers watch live sporting events such as such as the English Premier League and NBA Championship.

For instance, if you are watching a football game with your friends at the mamak shop and want to watch a different match, you can use the OTG feature to stream another ongoing match to your smartphone or tablet.  

“Live events always garner the most viewership, especially local and international sports, as well as  concerts,” said Lenz.

“We have even harmonised the look and feel of our next-generation TV Guide and now it’s multilingual. It presents us the opportunity to take our content to our customers on any type of screen they want.”

However, OTG has a drawback, as it’s dependant on network bandwidth. If the network speed is slow then the show will not stream smoothly.

“It is almost like we are the victims of our own success as users may overwhelm the network especially during big football matches and that may affect the viewing experience of others in the area,” said Lenz.

“There just is not enough bandwidth and Malaysia still has a long way to go espcially when it comes to broadband infrastructure.  We need to continue working with telcos and content distribution network companies to invest and hopefully offer a better experience to all our users.”

With the Fifa World Cup 2014 just two months away, Astro has big plans for OTG but declined to say them at this point.

Basic access to OTG is free for Astro customers. The fee starts at RM5 for non-subscribers.