Digital television in Hong Kong

Conventional free-to-air analogue television transmission has been used in Hong Kong since the 1967, the establishment of TVB with its TVB Jade channel. Decades passed, new digital television technologies became a new trend in television transmission. In early 2000s, flat panel widescreen television sets are highly popular in Hong Kong due to limited living space.fact|date=November 2007 Many people enjoy watching widescreen DVD movies on their TVs, but local broadcasts had not been in HD until early 2008.

While the local authorities had flagged end-2006 as the deadline for a decision to be made on which HDTV standard Hong Kong would adopt, political and business considerations continue to take precedence. .fact|date=November 2007 The mainland Chinese government will likely want to jam TV signals from Hong Kong, so that Chinese citizens near the border cannot receive uncensored content from Hong Kong.fact|date=November 2007 Currently, analogue TV signals from Hong Kong are delayed a few seconds before being relayed inland, such that content on banned topics such as mainland political topics can be blocked. fact|date=November 2007

Although Hong Kong is not required to follow the Mainland China's standard [PDFlink|http://www.cedb.gov.hk/ctb/eng/broad/pdf/DTT.pdf The Statement of the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology on The Implementation Framework for Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting, Page 3, retrieved February 11, 2008] , Hong Kong government still decided to use DMB-T/H as the digital television broadcast standard and the official commencement of digital TV broadcasting began at 7 p.m. on December 31, 2007 as the first digital TV signal transmitter in Tsz Wan Shan went online earlier in December.

The official specification defines standard-definition broadcasting will be in 576i at 25 fps and high-definition broadcasting in 720p at 50 Hz or 1080i at 25 Hz.

Digital television reception

Digital television will be available to Hong Kong citizens in several phases, depending on the completion of corresponding transmitters. All major transmitters are expected to be completed on or before August 15, 2008 covering at least 75% of Hong Kong population, the phases are shown in the table below [PDFlink| [http://www.digitaltv.gov.hk/general/pdf/coverage.pdf Estimated Coverage of Digital Terrestrial Television (7 transmitting stations)] , retrieved May 30, 2008] :

et-top boxes

The Office of Telecommunications Authority of Hong Kong (OFTA) has announced there will be two versions of set-top boxes available in the market at the very start of HDTV transmission, one is the basic-tier receivers, with basic reception of signals transmitted and restricted to standard-definition contents and decoding of MPEG-2, and another one the higher-tier receivers, which receives all standard-definition and high-definition contents as it can decode both MPEG-2 and H.264 content, and comes with a higher price. Logos and labels for consumers to identify the class of the set-top box were released on November 28, 2007 [ [http://www.ofta.gov.hk/en/broadcast/higher.jpgHigher-tier set-top box label] , and [http://www.ofta.gov.hk/en/broadcast/basic.jpgBasic-tier set-top box label] , retrieved December 3, 2007] .

OFTA promises the final price for basic-tier receivers will be "a few hundred" Hong Kong dollars and a higher-tier receivers will be "more than a thousand Hong Kong dollars". As of June 2007, company in PRC made basic-tier receivers are available for more than HK$ 1000 and higher-tier receivers were also made later with price range from HK$ 1500 to over HK$ 2000. All standard-definition only TV sets will require a set-top box to receive TV signals after the planned termination of analogue TV broadcasting and transmission in the future (currently planned in 2012).

PC with DMB-T/H USB Dongle

Another alternative to view HDTV is to use PC with a DMB-T/H USB Dongle. Popular software is ArcSoft Total Media, DVBViewer.

Related technologies

As a result of no definite video codec being set for the standard, this led to a discussion of the final video codec to be implemented in Hong Kong. The discussion between two operators, TVB and ATV, lasted for a considerable period. In October 2007, both broadcasting companies had agreed in November 2007 to utilize MPEG2 video format for simulcasting channels (TVB Jade, ATV Home, TVB Pearl and ATV World), and the H.264 format will be implemented for all digital broadcasting only channels [PDFlink| [http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr07-08/english/panels/itb/papers/itb1112cb1-203-3-e.pdf Paper: "Legislative Council Panel on Information Technology and Broadcasting on Progress in the Implementation of Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting"] , retrieved November 28, 2007 |41.9 KiB ] .

For the audio codec, usual DTMB set-top boxes will support MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) for stereo audio tracks, and Dolby AC-3 for surround sound audio tracks. TVB will also implement the use of MHEG-5 technology for providing interactive features, named "TVB Interactive", and providing a logo for consumers to identify set-top boxes with MHEG-5 middleware support [ [http://www.tvb.com/affairs/faq/press/images/TVB_Interactive_logo.jpgTVB Interactive logo] , retrieved December 3, 2007] .

Television channels

Each free-to-air television broadcasters, TVB and ATV received a new frequency band and extra bandwidths, besides the simulcast frequency band (Multi-frequency) for the original four analogue free-to-air channels which was shared between the two broadcasters.

Each broadcaster had started new channels, listed as follows:

Reference

External links

* [http://www.digitaltv.gov.hk/ Hong Kong Government digital TV website]
* [http://digitaltv.tvb.com/digitaltv.html TVB digital TV website]
* [http://app.hkatv.com/v3/digitalbroadcast/index.php ATV digital TV website] zh

* [http://www.arcsoft.com ArcSoft TotalMedia website]
* [http://www.dvbviewer.com DVBViewer website]