Media players are gaining popularity in Singapore

While it may be relatively new in Singapore, the sale of media players & downloaded movies has been going on in countries like China for a while.

Media players are gaining popularity as they allow various types of multimedia files that can normally be played only on computers to be played on a TV set. The prices of media players range from as little as $55 to as much as $400. The pricier ones come with a built-in hard disk to store the multimedia files, which include videos, music and photos. Those without a built-in hard disk require a portable hard disk or USB flash drive that contains the multimedia files.

Some shops at Sim Lim Square are filling the hard disk with hundreds of pirated movies for free to customers whom bought media players with Hard disk from them. For those who only bought the media players, you can pass them your portable hard disk to be filled. Some shop willing to provide free while some charged $3 per title.

This is the carrot being dangled by some vendors at Sim Lim Square to customers who buy media players from them. Sounds like a great deal, but the problem is what these vendors are doing is illegal. It's equivalent to selling pirated movies.

Nowadays, there's a new media players which will access its pre-encoded hosted sites to download the movie for viewing like YouTube, rather than accessing local storage for movies. Its more "Clean" but still illegal.

Sellers of media players who offer copies of movies in the media players or hard disks without permission from rights holders may be infringing copyright. When a customer asks for movies to be loaded, he is authorising the infringement and would be exposed to civil action as well. You have been warned!