Pay-TV challenger SingTel came up with a pretty interesting proposition today: How would you like to watch the latest episodes of Lost, Prison Break and other hit US drama series just 24 hours after they are screened over there?
It said it has signed a deal with three major US studios – Disney-ABC, 20th Century Fox and Warner-Bros – to bring these shows to its mio TV service as soon as a day after they are shown in the States.
Why is this good news?
1) You don’t need to spend hours to download that pirated Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles anymore. Pay for SingTel’s mioTV and you get it faster than the pirated stuff.
2) SingTel has beefed up its lineup well this time, bringing in much-needed content to pad up those brainless video game “HD” channels passed off as content
3) Competition for StarHub is keen now because SingTel has future technology. The beauty of IPTV is you can watch anything you want anytime. And when it comes to drama series (older ones, not the ones still being shown in the US weekly), you can watch everything at one go. That’s what people do in the Net age.
To be fair, it remains to be seen how many of these series will be shown that soon after its US broadcast, or if it’s just a gimmick for selected series.
Still, what SingTel has come up with is a much needed shot in the arm for pay-TV competition.
Yeah, the English Premier League is still exclusive and expensive, but let’s hope SingTel’s new lineup brings something really good for couch potatoes here. They deserve better than what’s been thrown up so far by in the first year of pay-TV competition here.
