Singapore kicks off World Cup in high-definition TV

Today, broadcasters StarHub and MediaCorp officially announced, together with the Media Development Authority, that HDTV trials will start in June. Singapore is the first country in South-east Asia to have HDTV trials.

StarHub launches World Cup in HD
StarHub, the sole cable provider here, will kick off, quite literally, with broadcasts of the World Cup, from 10 June to 10 July. The trial, which will have 1,000 participants, will run from 10 June to the end of the year. During the World Cup period, all 64 live World Cup matches will be available to the trialists on 2 new HDTV cable channels - 300 and 301. 56 of the matches will be on the main channel 300 with the remaining 8 simulcast on both channels. After the World Cup season, StarHub will screen documentaries and entertainment programmes on either 1 or 2 of the channels. At today's press conference StarHub showed HD programmes from National Geographic, but StarHub said this is not any indication whatsoever that the trialists will get National Geographic in HD.

(Comment: I think the 1,000 households should start stocking up on Coke and Heiniken and start charging visitors to their homes. Who wants to go the pubs when you can't watch World Cup in HD format?)

The Two Towers in HD??
MediaCorp will launch its HDTV trial on 18 June with The Lord of The Rings: Two Towers (Comment: are you kidding me??? who wants to watch a 3-year-old movie??) over its new Channel 38. During its 6-month trial, also covering 1,000 households, plus 10 community clubs and retail outlets, there will be an average of 14 hours of HD content per week between 7pm to 11pm. These will also include simulcats of Channel 5 programmes which will be "upconverted" to HD format.

The grapevine has it that MediaCorp will do a separate announcement nearer to its launch date to provide more details about its programmes.

Not a trialist? You may still be able to get the HD streams
Both StarHub and MediaCorp are streaming in MPEG4 format. Our DVDs today are recorded in MPEG2. Basically, the compression technology is more efficeint in MPEG4, which means for the same video quality, MPEG4 files are smaller. This is obviously important for broadcasters because it means they need less bandwidth to stream the video.

If you are not on the StarHub trial list, there's no alternative solution for you. But, you may be able to get MediaCorp HD even if you are not the lucky 1,000 Because MediaCorp is streaming via DVB-T (which means they are sending signals over the air) you may also be able get the broadcast on your PC, even if you are not the 1,000 trialists who are getting a set-top box. You need to get a DVB-T USB adapter that can support MPEG4 which you simply plug into your PC to get the signals. You don't have to be a trialist because you don't need the set-top box from MediaCorp. This should work in theory.

Unfortunately, because most of the set-top boxes and external TV tuner cards (for PCs) are in MPEG 2 format, there is less choice of equipment (set-top boxes for broadcasters, PC adapters for consumers). I'm still looking around for the PC adapters to test MediaCorp's HDTV trial. (Comment: Happauge may have one that works)

Here are the links to the trials:

www.starhub.com/hdtvtrial & http://www.corporate.mediacorp.sg/technologies/hdtv/