SingTel announces exclusive deal with major US studios...

Singaporeans will be the first in Asia to watch the latest episodes of top television shows from the United States, although the premium they will have to pay for this privilege remains to be seen. Come September, under its new Season Pass, pay-TV operator SingTel will offer — on-demand and without advertisements — hit series such as Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl, 24 and Prison Break, within 24 hours of their telecast in the US. This is possible through a deal inked with major studios, Warner Bros International Televison Distribution, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney-ABC International Televison, to bring in more than 50 shows.

Details of how much this will cost however are being kept under wraps until the service's launch. Typically, episodes of US series can take anywhere from six to 12 months to reach viewers here via StarHub Cable TV or free-to-air channels. There have, however, been exceptions. MediaCorp's Channel 5 has in the past shown American Idol and Survivor, among others, "live" as they were shown in the US. SingTel has noted that its deal with the three studios include an exclusivity period of six months. Missing from its Season Pass offerings, however, are popular titles such as Heroes and CSI. StarHub though isn't sitting idle. In direct response to SingTel's announcement on Wednesday, head of cable TV services Patrick Lim said StarHub would soon launch its own video-on-demand service, carrying popular TV series "with advanced windows", though he stopped short of specifying same-day telecasts. In recent months, SingTel has moved to beef up the content and features of its mio TV service which.

It added a range of movie on-demand channels, music channel Trace, as well as infotainment channels. In May, it launched a service allowing its 3G mobile subscribers to watch dramas and channels such as Channel NewsAsia on their phones. The biggest content coup up till now, however, has been winning the rights to broadcast — including on its mobile platform — the Champions League and Uefa Cup seasons from later this year to 2012. These efforts have contributed to growing subscriber numbers, from 10,000 last September to 27,000 in March, when the Uefa deal was announced, to 45,000 today. mio TV offers a total of 48 of standard- and high-definition channels ranging from free-to-air channels like MediaCorp's HD5, to infotainment channels from the BBC. [End of report]

This is definitely a great news for any mio TV subscribers because you dont have to wait for a very long time to watch your favourite shows from the U.S. anymore now. And you are not talking about any shows here, you are talking about popular shows such as Prison Break, Ugly Betty and Lost, all of which are some of my favourite. I think everyone here would love the idea that they can watch all the latest episodes and the lastest season at just about the same time as the American. The problem for me though, I dont subscribe to mio TV. I subscribe to the Starhub Cable Vision though. If you are comparing what the subscribers to mio TV will be getting soon to what the Starhub Cable Vision subscribers are getting now, I do think it is worth it. But I am not comparing the price here though because we still dont know how much exactly the subscribers to mio TV will be paying to watch the new shows. The Season Pass will not be priced as a package of TV shows, but rather they will have to pay per season of each TV series. What this mean is that lets say you want to watch Prison Break, you can only pay for the entire series of the show and not like paying all the different shows you want to watch at one price. I heard that the price of each TV series could range from $15 to $45.

So the question now is whether it is worth for you to stop subscribing to Starhub Cable Vision if you are currently doing so, in favour of Singtel's mio TV instead. Let's look at the TV programmes that are currently being offered on both side. There is no doubt that Starhub has a wider variety of shows as compared to Singtel. For me, I dont particularly compare the price, I like to see which cable operator is available to give me the things that I would be most interested like which channels are available. I like to watch the sport channel as well as the news channel and currently, Starhub gives me a much more interesting option. You got international news channel such as BBC and CNN to choose from Starhub while Singtel only have channels such as Al-Jazeera English and CCTV-9. Singtel currently doesnt have any sport channel if Im not wrong but of course they will be showing the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup later this year. So you cant watch those matches anymore on Starhub soon but you will still be able to watch the Barclays Premier League on Starhub's Football Channel and competitions such as the FA Cup on ESPN or StarSports. Therefore I think, if you want the best option for the news and sports channel, you should stick with Starhub. As much as I hate not being able to watch my favourite TV shows from the U.S. in the quickest time possible, I cant bear not to watch my favourite football team on the TV set every weekend, so I have to pass the mio TV deal for now even though it is really tempting.

My best hope now is that Starhub will come up with something similar or even better to fight off the competition from Singtel. I still think though that Starhub offers the best deal in terms of what is available to the viewers but Singtel is fast catching up and if Starhub doesnt do anything, Im pretty sure Singtel mio TV will be the preferred cable channel for most Singaporeans. But as far as I am concern for now at least, I am content with what Starhub is offering but I cannot say that it would be the same situation in the future. If somehow in the future, there is CNN or when mio TV start to broadcast the Barclays Premier League, I will seriously consider subscribing to mio TV. For those of you who are subscribing to Starhub Cable, I have a good news to share with you. As you all know, the Olympic Games is coming up real soon. And StarHub will offer Beijing 2008 Olympic Games coverage across six dedicated cable TV channels - OLYMPICS 1 to 6 (Channels 601 to 606). All Olympic channels will run daily from as early as 8am, and will carry ‘live’ and delayed programming till midnight. The channels are made available free to StarHub’s cable TV customers with a HubStation, digital or High Definition (HD) set-top box.

So there you go. If you would like to find out more about Starhub CableTV and Singtel's mio TV, you may want to visit their website respectively at http://www.starhub.com/portal/site/CableTV and http://mio.singtel.com/miotv/default.asp . Dont worry if you do not subscribe to any of them as Channel 5 will still be showing some of the shows, but you have to wait though. By the way, if youre a mio TV subscriber, please tell me because I would love to hear from you on what you think of the channel.

*The report was taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com