Singapore Expats

Hey,
My partner and I are in the process of packing up to move to Singapore, and we've come across the censorship rules for bring in CDs DVDs etc.
We've got a few box sets and cd albums we'd like to bring with, but really don't want to deal with the censorship boards. Can anyone advise us? I know its not serious, but the questions been bugging me...

My shipping co suggested decanting all my DVDs from the boxes and take them as luggage when flying in.

This was not to circumvent the authorities as you should declare them on arrival, but the shipping co said that customs checks the DVDs and charge $3 per hour. Dont know if they watch everything or do random checks.

My concern was not to delay my whole consignment longer than necessary due to a few DVDs....have been quoted 8-12 weeks for shipping!

if its not pirated cds and not in huge quantities which would make one think you're selling them will not be a problem. if its for personal use nothing to worry bout. Their concern is for bringing in pirated materials...

When we were shipping all our DVDs (hundreds), we just had to send them (along all our customs forms) a list of all our titles (as long as they are not pirated), it should be fine.

You can check out if there's some DVDs you think will need to be censored, here on MDA site. Most of the Dvds are allowed in with min censorship. We had no problem bringing ours in.

https://app.mda.gov.sg/classification/S ... pe=Feature

We sold all our dvds and most of our cds before moving here. My husband justified this in saying that these media are no longer the 'lastest thing' and will be obsolete by the time we finish our 2 year run here and then we won't be able to sell them. So, we put all our favourites on an external hard drive and started our bluray collection here. We also are making use of iTunes for HBO series--they show some on TV here but they're heavily censored for language and nudity. And they have Chinese subtitles which are rather distracting. I'm not sure of what's available on the Singapore iTunes site, as we are using an American based credit card so we have to keep our account in the USA--thus we are maybe circumventing some of the censorship laws. Not sure on that point.

fyi, depending on how many discs you have, you can just put some in your luggage. they rarely check the discs even if they scan your luggage. if your discs are legit and you're not hiding something, you get through customs in a breeze. but yeah, check with the mda list just to be sure if you're gonna pack some discs in your luggage.

Thanks for all the tips, that definitely helps.