Telco M1 has "upsized" its Internet television offerings by throwing in free movies, e-books and games as well as more than doubling the amount of paid online content available.
From Friday, customers will be given a new set-top box, called MiBox to plug into their TVs to stream online content. This box will replace M1's existing 1box.
MiBox streams 18,000 video-on-demand titles, 116 TV channels, 1,200 e-books and 370 gaming apps - about half of which are free. Free Korean drama series and Chinese variety shows are streamed from video site Viki and Korean music TV service provider KMTV. Short films produced by Singapore Polytechnic are also available for free on MiBox.
Free games - like Cut the Rope and Tower Defense - played on Android-based mobile devices can also be downloaded and played on the TV via the service. MiBox is offered to M1 fibre broadband customers at $8 per month, but broadband users from other Internet service providers pay $12 per month.
Paid content subscription or download fees are in addition to the MiBox subscription fee. For instance, a basic package of 20 channels from KyLinTV - which has 46 live TV channels in China including CCTV4 Asia, Dragon TV HD and Hunan TV HD - is available for $14.99 per month.
Educational content publishers including Etutor and MC Online's interactive Chinese, maths and science TV programmes for Primary 1 to 6 pupils are also available at $2.14 per month for each programme.
Like the old 1box, MiBox lets users surf the Web, stream videos from YouTube and connect to online social networks like Facebook on their TV sets.
Consumers can also watch videos stored in thumb-sized external drives by plugging these storage devices into the MiBox's USB port. Users move the cursor on the TV via a motion-sensing remote control that comes with MiBox.
