Well, SingTel has announced their prices, and it seems they’re playing fair. Their prices are reasonable. You just need to pay to watch EPL if that’s all you want, and it will cost just $24.61 (inclusive of GST). No need to sign up any basic tier. You will have to get (and pay) for a phone line though.

A couple of years ago, it would be taken for granted that every household would have a SingTel phone line anyway. But nowadays, that is no longer the case. Some households either have no fixed phone lines at all, or they’ve gone to StarHub’s Digital Voice. So it will cost a nominal one-time cost to prep up your home for MioTV (that’s SingTel’s pay TV service), not unlike the setup, activation and installation charges for StarHub cable TV, as well as a monthly subscription for the phone line, which is much less than the basic tier of channels for StarHub’s cable TV.

It sounds like SingTel fixed phone lines are going to have a comeback, at least for people who have to have MioTV.

I’m sure the fixed phone line business doesn’t turn over a big profit. But look at how StarHub has been cleverly bundling cable TV, fixed/mobile broadband, and fixed/mobile phone services. SingTel has been loosing ground. Most people don’t really care about MioTV. For fixed broadband and mobile phone services, most people just go to wherever the best deal is. StarHub has the upper hand of bundling with cable TV, as their cable TV does offer good programmes. I imagine SingTel will use their EPL win to their advantage to win over not just soccer fans, but also mobile phone and fixed broadband users.

So with SingTel and StarHub offering somewhat equivalent range of services, I’m sure we’ll see competition heating up. This ought to be good for consumers.

M1 will be in trouble.

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Samsung has a good reputation for their LCD TVs (and for their LED TVs too), so it is no wonder that the picture quality is that good. Quality comes with a price, of course, and personally I thought that Samsung LCD TVs are pricey compared to other competitive models of similar specifications. I had not set out to buy a Samsung TV, but I surprised myself by ultimately deciding on a Samsung.

I was actually considering the Sharp Aquos LC-42A77M. But the salesman at Best Denki recommended that I take a look at this Samsung model. The plus point? Picture quality, built-in HD tuner (i.e. no need for a separate HD set-top box), and the freebies. Samsung is offering a 26″ LCD TV along with the purchase of this TV. Sounds like an attractive proposition. But at $1799, it costs $200 more than the Sharp I was eyeing. I don’t need another 26″ TV, no point to pay $200 more.

The built-in HD tuner is not really that useful either. I connect my TV to StarHub Digital Cable. If I want HD, I would probably go with StarHub HD set-top box. The built-in HD tuner would be unnecessary.

The plus point for the Sharp is that it has a 100Hz engine, while the Samsung is 50Hz only. However, with LCD panels, the Hz doesn’t really matter that much because the issue of image flickering that happens with CRT screens is not relevant to LCD panels.

Samsung isn’t very informative with their specifications. For example, their contrast ratio is simply listed as “high”, whereas the Sharp lists 50000:1 (which seems pretty good compared with available specifications of other LCD TVs). The Sharp LC-42A77M is also 2″ larger than the Samsung. However, I’m told that all new panels are standardizing on 40″ dimensions rather than 42″.

This TV model number is LA40B530P7M . It is the “B” generation of the Series 5. The older “A” generation would have model numbers which go something like “LAxxAxxx…”. I guess “B” would be better than “A”, although I don’t know specifically in what way.

Now that the TV is here, what do I think of it? Well, as I said at the start, the picture quality is superb. The black is so black, so much that the menu screens which had some parts in black background blended in with the bezel around the screen, and the stickers that came stuck around the bezel. It was really good. The brightness was similarly so good that the picture was still relatively clear despite the afternoon sun falling on the screen.

The audio quality isn’t much to boast about. The sound is crisp and clear, but there is not much bass. I suppose for wholesome sound, you would really need a proper home theatre system matched with a good set of speakers.

The energy saving feature of the TV saves energy by dimming the backlight. In “auto” mode, the backlight is adjusted according to the picture being shown. I find auto mode irritating because of the brightness adjustments can be seen, although perhaps that was because I was looking out for it.

Feature-wise, this TV is pretty simple. No picture-in-picture and channel matrix previews, for example, although not that it matters anyway since those would not work when you get cable TV through a set-top box which controls all the channels.

I hoping to try connecting my PC to this 40″ display some time soon. The latter has a VGA D-Sub input connector for that purpose, and supports resolutions up to 1920 x 1080.

If you’re looking around for a 40″ or 42″ LCD TV, this is something you might want to consider. The 26″ LCD TV freebie is supposedly worth $799. I imagine it should be easy to fetch at least $450. Incidentally, back to the reason why I changed my mind from the Sharp to Samsung? Well, the Sharp comes with 3 years warranty, but I was told the panel warranty itself is only for the 1st year. The Samsung LCD TV is fully covered for 3 years. I thought if I had to pay for extended warranty for the Sharp LCD TV, the price would have almost matched the Samsung’s. In that case, why not get the Samsung then. It has a 26″ LCD TV that has to be worth something. (It seems an alternative freebie to the 26″ LCD TV is a home theatre system.)

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I’m quite lucky. I bought Best Denki’s extended 5 year warranty for the Panasonic 42″ projection TV I purchased 5 years ago. Two weeks why of the warranty expiry, the TV died. According to Panasonic, the TV is irreparable, because one of the faulty components is no longer manufactured. As such, Best Denki is offering me compensation of 20% of the original purchase price.

I sounds like the “expiry timer” of my TV had been set wrongly. Good for me, of course. Had this happened two weeks later, I’d be stuck with a spoilt irreparable TV and no compensation.

So I’ve recently educated myself on the latest technological developments in the world of television. Some of the LCD TVs nowadays are really cheap, but the “in thing” nowadays is LED TVs, and these are very costly. I’ve been worried about LCD, as in those CCFL backlit variety, because they are said to loose their brightness and light qualities pretty quickly. Or perhaps that’s just the marketing speak of the LED proponents. For example, the LED proponents have said that CCFL loose half their brightness in 1 year. I’m not sure if they mean a whole year of always-on. A whole year of always-on is very long for a home TV.

But as with all other technology things, new and better things will always come along. It may be LED now, but OLED is coming. So I think it is not such a bad thing to go for a cheaper more affordable LCD now. Even if you spend a bomb on LED now, it will very quickly get outdated too.

I’ve decided to go for conventionally backlit LCD TVs, and I have a few simple requirements:

• Full HD (it seems to me that there are some “Full HDs” that are fuller than others…)
• 1920 x 1080 resolution
• High-contrast of at least 20000:1
• Brightness at least 500cd/m2
• Less than 10ms response time
• At least 2 HDMI inputs
• PC input

Of course, for as small a price tag as possible. I have some models in mind already. Big question now is 37″ or 42″. Some possible candidates: Sharp Aquos LC42A66M, Toshiba RV500E, Sharp LC37A65M.

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My wife and I have been wanting some kind of recording capability for some time, because we don’t have any VCR or DVR at home, so all our TV watching has to be in realtime. This is really inconvenient, of course, and so we ended up missing lots of programmes.

StarHub used to actively promote the HubStation. Depending on the contract, you could get the HubStation for free, or you could pay about $197 to own the box. Nowadays, it seems StarHub is neglecting their cable TV customers. There are no offers or promotions for the HubStation anymore. Now, I’ve got to pay $8.56 a month to rent the box. The good thing is that there is no contract. The bad thing is, after 24 months, I would have paid over $200 in rental, and with that amount of money, I could already have owned the box.

The HubStation is a revolution in watching TV. You can pause real-time live TV, so you can take a phone call and not miss anything on TV. You can rewind real-time live TV, so you can replay something you missed. You can browse and choose what shows to record from an online programme guide. Gone are the days of programming separate DVRs or VCRs where you either wind up setting the wrong time, the wrong day, or the wrong channel. The online programme guide is also convenient, it gives you a synopsis, running time, and other useful information.

Of course, this is not like a startling revelation to me. I know what interactive can do. I know what the HubStation can do. It’s just strange why we didn’t get it sooner.

The picture quality I get from my TV is now better with the HubStation. This is probably the benefit of moving to digital TV signals (as opposed to the RF analog signal previously). Oddly, the audio level is significantly lower. While the audio level as OK with my TV volume set at 19 previously, I now have to bring it up to 25. That is even with the HubStation’s volume max’ed out.

The other 2 of the “3-in-1″ features of the HubStation are uninteresting. You get free unlimited use of 1Mbps bandwidth broadband Internet access. There is no upgrade plans available for the HubStation. So, if 1Mbps is not enough (and it probably isn’t enough for most people), you’re going to need another broadband Internet access anyway, so having the 1Mbps on the HubStation isn’t very useful. To use the phone functions on the HubStation… well, you need an IAD, and also you need to pay for the feature. Sounds like a fine print designed to catch you unaware and get you to pay more.

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