Couch potatoes in Singapore will find it easier to switch pay-TV operators come March 2012, when new rules unveiled today kick in to prevent operators from locking in users with long-term or punitive subscription plans.

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The much-derided licence fees that Singapore residents have to pay for simply owning a TV or radio have been finally scrapped, as part of an election-friendly Budget unveiled today by the government here in Parliament.

Until now, home owners paid S$110 a year for a TV licence while car owners paid S$27 a year for tuning in to FM radio on the go. With this change, users would save about S$120 million in such fees a year, revealed Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam today. …

No, it is not SingTel and StarHub you should be angry with. Nor should you fret that the S$66 package – at about S$1-a-match – to watch the World Cup on the telly is four times more than what you had paid in 2006.

Rather, the best reason to switch off from next month’s football extravaganza is because you, the Singapore football fan, have been taken for a ride.

And unless you vote with your remote, prices for sports programming and other pay-TV offerings in future will go further north, after these World Cup deals announced last Friday. …

Often a tolerant lot, Singaporeans can accept a lot of things – slow broadband speeds, lack of full number portability (until last year) and even not being able to choose their government (in some wards).

But one thing they can’t stand, joked a journalist pal of mine, is to have their weekend football fix taken away. Should that happen, he declared, there’d be a “RIOOOOT!”

That perhaps explains why the Singapore media authorities did a stunning U-turn yesterday, saying that they might just  make SingTel share its fresh-in-the-bag Barclays Premier League rights with StarHub come next year.

Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, even went so far as to say the government was considering an universal pay-TV set-top box for Singapore homes, so that people don’t have to get two set-top boxes to watch BPL on SingTel and other popular channels that StarHub carries. …

First, it was on. Then, we’re not so sure.

Without the protagonists even speaking a word about it, the market has been filled with talk of a possible SingTel-StarHub joint bid for the upcoming three seasons of exclusive Barclays Premier League (BPL) content.

Yet, after days of drama, consumers are still no clearer on whether they will 1) have to pay more because of the higher bids predicted 2) buy two set-top boxes to watch different matches should the bids be split. …

The writing’s been on the wall, but StarHub is finally going to turn off its analog cable TV channels and go fully digital from June 30, 2009.

Already, 96 per cent of its cable customers are on digital – a result of switching over customers since 2004, when the first digital set-top boxes went out to homes.

Over the years, StarHub’s mostly used the “carrot” rather than “stick” to encourage homes to go digital. New programmes were offered on its digital tiers, and when old analog boxes went bonkers, subscribers were encouraged to switch to the digital boxes.

Then, there were stuff like the Hubstation, essentially a digital set-top box rolled in with a video recorder, free phone line and 1Mbps broadband. Why would you want an analog box that has been around since 1995?

I actually think digital TV hadn’t come fast enough. …

Start-up@ Singapore 2009, a national business plan competition with a 10-year pedigree, is giving away this to potential winners, amongst other goodies like S$200,000 cash prizes.

The initial executive summary phase has been extended to 6th Feb (Friday), according to SgEntrepreneurs in a post today. You still have about 4 days or so to hand in your submission.

For more information on what this national business plan competition is all about, here’s a FAQ, and here’s why the deadline was extended.

Serious couch potatoes got a big boost last week, when news emerged that HD5 is finally going to be shown on StarHub’s cable TV service.

What’s the big deal with one more free-to-air HD channel? Well, finally StarHub users won’t need to get another Draco or other free-to-air HD boxes. And I’m glad I didn’t buy a Samsung F8 LCD TV with an HD tuner built in.

More importantly, one of the biggest hurdles has been taken out for HDTV here. A disagreement between MediaCorp and StarHub had prevented MediaCorp’s HD channels from being shown on StarHub.

It was said that both parties were squabbling over a small carriage fee, but in reality, they both disagreed in principle – a principle that has made it really inconvenient for viewers and may have slowed down HD takeup in Singapore.

So, it is a big step forward for HD fans here that HD5 will come to StarHub next month (July). Credit this time goes to the Government, which has a hand in brokering this deal - the news was announced by the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Lee Boon Yang, at the opening of the imbX trade show last week.

The news couldn’t have come at a better than for new owners of HD TV sets – like me. I had bought the bargain of the show at the PC Show – a Samsung Full HD 40-inch LCD for $1,699 – 2 weeks ago. Since then, I’ve swapped out my StarHub box for an HD box ($48 one-time fee, plus one-year contact), bought an Xbox 360 and finally last Saturday, an Onkyo SR606 AV amp.

Everything is hooked up on HDMI – one wire from source to the amp, and the amp basically takes care of everything because it has audio switching. You don’t need to run separate audio/video cables… everything now runs perfectly to the amp, which outputs the video to the Samsung N8 screen and my Quad 11L speakers.

When I tuned to StarHub’s Ch301 and 302 for NatGeo and Discovery HD, you can imagine the joy. Never has TV looked as sharp, nor audio sounded so good on TV. And I’m not even going into Blu-ray yet.

My own experience vindicates what I have always thought – with HD, you don’t want to go back once you have seen it yourself.

People are already buying up HD-ready and Full HD screens every other week, and if you turn up at Harvey Norman now, you’d be hard-pressed to buy a non-HD screen. So people are buying up HD screens fast – we may have reached an inflection point for HD screen takeup.

But what we need now is for broadcasters to move faster to bring in the content – it’s already there in the US now (so there’s no excuse), and even HD cameras are getting very cheap (available to consumers now), so there’s no reason why we cant’ have more content.

Bringing HD5 on StarHub is a great deal, coz it will bring at least some “regular” content, like CSI, on HD. Now comes the waiting game for more new channels. I think people have been patient  so far, now the ball is in the broadcasters’ court.

(info on HDTV for newbies here)