Interestingly, at that same time, $ingapore Telecom was operating the braindead Teleview system which boasted the ability to send out frames over the broadcast channel, UHF 24. [This has stopped as of middle of 1994 or so. That channel will be used by Televsion 12 Pte Ltd as it's second broadcast channel. The reason cited for this stoppage is to free up valuable broadcast frequencies.]
This was all well and good. To make sure that the national project would be successful (which it was not), the HDB added an antenna sensitive enough for receiving UHF 24 only. This was done back in 1990/early 1991.
When HDB had to provide the additional antennae for the UHF reception of the "cable" station, it had to go back to the roof tops to put in a new set. This new set will allow reception of the channels UHF 24 thru 34 at least. The upside of this exercise is that all HDB residents will then get to see Malaysia's TV3 which happens to be broadcast to the Singapore/southern Johor region on UHF 26.
Well, the government was not stupid, you see. It though it fit to spend some more tax-payers money to put in a filter that filters out UHF 26 from the HDB CATV systems.
How did I find all of this out? Well, I have, at home, a simple loop antenna made from a metal hanger connected in turn to a UHF booster and thence to my TV to receive TV3. When the new antennae were put up on my HDB block, I said, hey, now they have no choice but to let TV3 through. My home-brew antenna could receive Teleview (UHF 24), TV3 (UHF 26), SCV 1 (UHF 28), SCV 2 (UHF 32) and SCV 3 (UHF 34) even before the HDB upgraded my block's CATV. When I unplugged my home-brew and plugged in the CATV cable, all of them except for TV3 was receiveable. Hmm.
My electrical engineering training told me that this is possible only if they are filtering out UHF 26. I called HDB to find out, but they refused to confirm. Instead they gave me a really braindead answer: "It is illegal to receive TV3. The government says so." I tracked down the HDB CATV contractor, and he confirmed that there was indeed a filter in the CATV. Ahuh!
I wrote a letter to the Minister of National Development complaining the need for all this nonsense. An uninspired underling answered with some bogus ' answers - "the filter was to ensure no interference with other channels" - and so on.
I replied to this saying that it is unacceptable and cc'ed the letter to the PM. The PM's screeners forwarded it to MITA and some fellow from there replied to me confirming the filtering and that it is indeed government policy to do so.
I replied to the letter from MITA rebutting each and every point. They subsequently replied saying simply "thank you for the interest in the matter." Case closed.
I did not bother to write to the local papers as it will probably not be published.
So now you know. Call your MP (PAP/SDP/WP or otherwise) and show him/her this page. They need to know also.
Financial expenditure: The average cost of a filter CATV contractors tell me is about S$50. HDB tells me that there are about 10,000 blocks. Now, if each block has one CATV, this braindead exercise cost you and I to the tune of S$500,000. Money well spent? NOT!
A side note: Responsibility for the CATV was transferred from the HDB to the Town Councils sometime in 1990/91. In 1992 or so, that was reverted back to the HDB. So, if you were to call your Town Council on matters concerning the CATV, they will refer you to the HDB.
Questions? Email h.pillay@ieee.org