Finally, it's now possible to watch Hokkien TV (from Taiwan) in Singapore. Starhub Cable just launched what's called "Ruyi Hokkien Channel on Demand (如意福建台）" on its demand channels in August 2008. You would need to subscribe this Demand TV channel to watch Hokkien variety shows, drama etc. I think it costs $6 monthly to subscribe to the channel.

For more details, refer to http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=11484&cid=5

I hope to subscribe it and watch it. It will be a good way to learn Hokkien.

I was in Pontian last month and i was watching a Malaysian cable channel on Astro which was also Ruyi Hokkien Channel... haha they even had Huang Yi Fei(the original singer of Yi Bai Wan) hosting a malaysian hokkien variety show! and i thought malaysian chinese were more cantonese!

Depends on where you go. The state of Penang and Malacca(i.e Straits Settlement) are pretty much Hokkien. You can find more Cantonese in the capital though

Unlike Singapore, Malaysia don't discourage cantonese and hokkien shows.

Hokkien shows are only popular these few years in Malaysia.

It can be watched on NTV7, 8TV (free TV) or

astro Hua hee tai and AEC (paid TV)

Yeahh! i also realised that when i went to Penang(hokkien speaking) and ipoh(quite a fair bit of gaginang aka teochews).

That's the thing i don't like about the media in Singapore in the way they discourage chinese dialects in general to be broadcast on any media. if the cantonese and taiwanese shows had at least dual sound it would be so good for us.

wow malaysia really has more choices when it comes to those dialect channels. thanks for the information!

Malaysia used to be deluged 100% with cantonese shows during the 70s and 80s. Then came mandarin shows in the 90s. Now the hokkien shows in the 21th century.

Now malaysia has all 3 main chinese languages showing concurrently.

A lot of singaporeans tune into malaysian tv shows to watch the cantonese shows in the 70s and 80s due to all the dubbing in singapore.






The lingua franca for KL and ipoh is cantonese.

Thanks a lot for the information i always like to know more about stuff in the neighbouring country, more stuff learnt again!

When I was in singapore, I could receive malaysian tv shows like TV2, TV3.

How come you are not able to ?

rarely catch those channels because if i am at home usually i would be online and if i watch tv i would watch more of the other channels such as Zhong Tian or TVBS.

The two Taiwanese channels are from Starhub:

Zhongtian - CTI - Channel 52
TVBS - Channel 54

Did you manage to get Hubstation? I wanted to help my parents subscribe to Ruyi Channel but it requires us to have the Hubstation set top first.

My parents do not want to subscribe to additional channel.. . 'cos my mum says it's more expensive. Anyway, my home TVs are all occupied by my parents who watch different TV shows from mine, so I haven't had the slightest chance to watch anymore TV shows. Guess, Ruyi show is only possible in the future, if I add additional hubstation.