Mediacorp plans to deliver its seven free-to-air TV channels over the Internet within the next year, providing another way to view the Singapore broadcaster’s local programmes as well as other content that it has the rights to.
Revealing this today, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, said the new service offered a good way for Singaporeans overseas to keep abreast of events at home.
More details will be available as the service nears rollout, he said today at the opening of the imbX (Infocomm Media Business Exchange) event, which incorporates CommunicAsia.
Mediacorp is also said to be planning for an interactive service that will deliver free and and premium content over broadband to PCs, tablets and mobile phones. Called OTT (Over The Top), the service is expected to be launched later this year.
Dr Yaacob also revealed that Singapore was looking to adopt the latest terrestrial digital TV standard known as DVB-T2, an upgrade over the current DVB-T or Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial. A trial network is expected to be installed in September to test how the technology is suited to Singapore’s terrain, he added.
DVB-T is a TV standard used commonly in Europe. Promising higher bit rates suitable for bandwidth-hungry high-def programmes, DVB-T2 is already used in Britain, Italy and Sweden.
Does anyone know if there are any TVs currently equipped with DVB-T2 tuners? For those TVs with existing DVB-T tuners, will it be rendered useless when DVB-T2 goes ahead?
It could be worse if it was iPad or iOS only!
I can only hope that Mediacorp does not restrict itself to a Flash video client, or worse Silverlight. The Mediacorp TV guide (http://entertainment.xin.msn.com/en/tv/tv-guide.aspx) *requires* you to have Silverlight installed which is blah.
HTML5 video please.