My news is now euronews and web-based BBC World Service radio streaming. My entertainment is a mix of Granada TV (fabulous drama and will be even better when they get the names of the shows on the electronic programme guide), a bit of Sony Entertainment Television (good strong female leads and a brave woman who cooks with bell sleeves), some online browsing (and weeeeping that I can’t access the U.S. sites for catch up),  loads and loads and loads of on-demand in various packages, and, of course, a very willing overdose of DVDs. 

If my DVR hadn’t gone wrong, there’s no way in the world I would have gone on a hunt for alternatives. At least not so actively. But it did, and I did and I found loads and I haven’t decided how much going back there is.

I’m very likely to turn on the digital cable box again, but am I getting the DVR back? Maybe not. And am I getting the multiple boxes installed again. Definitely not, especially not when the regular digital box is half the price.

Where does that leave me on the StarHub value chain? At the bottom with all the other downsizers…  and I’m good with that. But if they don’t have the box in my house, how are they going to up-sell me with value adds? Clearly not my problem. 

I don’t for a minute think that anyone is going to follow me down the path of “what happens if i give up cable” for no good reason. Cable is varied and  it’s pretty good value for money and there really is no real TV alternative yet in the tiny-weeny Singapore market. But if cable becomes a problem, it’s easier now to give it up than it used to be when there were zero alternatives. And that, if anything, is where StarHub’s challenge lies….

And, by the way, i STILL don’t know what went wrong with my box and it must be three weeks at least. How long does it take?

It took a while — like 40+ years and a tantrum with StarHub — but I think I might have discovered a really really short route to smart. Will test at next dinner party…

 It takes me back to the days before TV was allowed into South Africa by an apartheid government worried about the influence of foreign (read English-language) programming on the country’s Afrikaans culture. Idiots. 

It’s a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon (no, I won’t be taking up knitting or needlework), but is it a replacement for TV? Hmmm… not really. It is a good alternative though, and this experiment is less about replacements than exploring alternatives. On the other hand, I may have less choice than I would like. StarHub has been deafeningly silent about my DVR for seven days now, which doesn’t bode well. A service that doesn’t work properly compounded by an inability to say what’s gone wrong… hmmm.

P.S. More about Day Four later… and my (failed) quest to wrest value out of the two subscription-on-demand channels i bought in a fit of Day One enthusiasm.

So, I dig out and dust off my old radio (hasn’t been turned on for years, and it still works. Go Sony!), and  listen to a BBC World Service documentary on gold mining in Johannesburg. It’s kind of tired, but i mourn the disappearance of my home town’s gold dumps all the same and fall asleep (shame on me) during the following docu on the apparently still booming illegal ivory trade.

Although I wake up for long enough to hear a piece on women in Afghanistan forced into food-for-sex by their husbands (and I think I have problems with a broken DVR), it’s the earliest night I’ve had in, like, forever since TV was invented and I became a willing addict.

Am not ready to call StarHub (still no word on why my DVR cut the end off shows) and beg for a new box.

So, what exactly ARE my choices?

The obvious one is Singapore’s second pay-TV platform, two-year-old IPTV service Mio TV, operated by telco SingTel. It’s not that I don’t ordinarily watch Mio. I do. It’s just that the HubStation’s My Playlist, with all the series I’ve recorded, has (in a very very short time) become my comfort zone, the place I go before any others.

I spend 45 minutes looking through all the subscription on-demand movie channels and pick two films that will kick off my experiment: Donnie Brasco, starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, on PIX Thriller and The White Countess (a Merchant Ivory film with Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson) on PIX. If I take both channels, it’s just under S$26/US$18 for the month. Done.

A good second on my new list of viable TV options is an extravagant stash of Korean dramas on DVD usually reserved for long plane journeys, beach holidays and, I guess, odd viewing experiments.

Third is YouTube, although I doubt whether anything there is going to scratch my TV entertainment itch for thieves, murderers, conmen and those who track and catch them. Nevertheless, it will, I already know, keep me amused for hours and it’s free, so it stays on the list.

And then there are online and various catch-up services offered by Singapore’s monopoly free-TV broadcaster MediaCorp. I log onto MediaCorp’s new-ish online portal MobTV, which promises me free catch-up episodes of Criminal Minds, Lost and the new season of Singapore Idol. I fill in the form, get my password, re-do it all when it doesn’t work, only to find out that… I failed the systems test. I guess this is not an option for Mac users.

StarHub (which hasn’t yet got back to me with an answer about the HubStation that started all this) also offers an online TV service, which totally falls within the non-traditional TV lines. I log on and find out it’s going to cost S$26.75/US$18.50 a month. For that, I get seven channels, including three football channels. I don’t think so. 



Even if I knew how, pirating content is not an option… mostly because I’m not stupid enough to stir the wrath of the intellectual property gods lest they rain bad Feng Shui down on me. Which they will, for sure.

I briefly consider renting a U.K proxy server so that I can get into the BBC’s iPlayer. It’s easy enough and costs about S$30 a month; the inconvenience (apart from the Feng Shui Fairy who frowns on unauthorized access) is that the downloads can, I’m told, take hours. Is it worth it? Even for Wallander and Panorama? Tempting, but no.

With day one almost done, I settle in to watch Donnie Brasco, which is based on a true story about an FBI agent who infiltrates the mafia, and The White Countess, set in Shanghai in the 1930s. Both are fabulous.

So far no DVR withdrawal symptoms…