I hated it when ESPN decided to increase their license to our cable TV company and hence an increase price in the subscription of the sports channels. I am against the increase, so I choosed to cancel the subscription of the sports channels. I'll probably end up paying more for my alternate means of watching the soccer games, but I am just unhappy about the increase in price.

Now is the World Cup season. In the past World Cup, sports channel subscribers get to watch it free. This year, sports channel subscribers have to pay an extra sum of money to watch them. Non sports channel subscribers have to pay an even larger sum of money to watch them. The cable TV company has got exclusive rights to the World Cup games, therefore our main broadcasting company is showing only 4 games. Our neighbours, including Malaysia and not-so-developed Indonesia get to watch it for free, Singaporeans can't.

There were a few ways of watching World Cup without paying our cable TV company. If you live in older HDB flats, you can connect your TV back to the old TV antenna instead of the SCV port. This way, you get to watch both RTM 1 and RTM 2. The SCV port can only let you watch RTM 1. RTM 1 and RTM 2 have combined to show all the matches of the World Cup.

Or you can buy an antenna and hook it to your TV and see if you can receive Indonesian Channel SCTV. The signal for SCTV have improved over the year and it's much more clearer now.

You can also of course go to your favourite pub/kopi tiam and watch the games from there.

And finally, you can download and install a P2P movie streaming player like TVU player". The image quality is not bad, and if more people are watching, you have better reception.