Digital television in Hong Kong

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.[citation needed] Many people enjoy watching widescreen DVD movies on their TVs, but local broadcasts are not in HD.

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. 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. 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.

Although Hong Kong is not required to follow the Mainland China's standard[1], 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.

Contents

[edit] 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[2]:

   % Population
coverage		 Transmitter location Constructor 1 Coverage areas Transmitter
date of transmission
commencement		 Transmitter status
Phase 1 ≥ 50 Tsz Wan Shan TVB Northern Hong Kong Island
Kowloon Peninsula
Partial areas in Sha Tin and
Eastern Lantau Island		 December 31, 2007 Online
Phase 2 ≥ 75 Castle Peak Tuen Mun
Yuen Long and
Northern Lantau Island		 Trial run in May and June;
July 16, 2008 (expected)		 Incomplete
Golden Hill Tsuen Wan
Kwai Chung and
Partial areas of Tsing Yi		 May 28, 2008 Online
Kowloon Peak Tseung Kwan O
Sai Kung and
Eastern Hong Kong Island
Cloudy Hill aTV Ma On Shan
Tai Po and
Northern New Territories		 July 16, 2008
(expected)		 Incomplete
Lamma Island TVB Southern Hong Kong Island and
Partial areas of the outlying islands		 June 21, 2008
(expected)
Mount Nicholson
(Minor transmitter)		 Happy Valley
Causeway Bay and
Wan Chai		 Early July, 2008
(expected)
Phase 3 ≥ 99 All minor transmitters TVB and aTV Remaining parts of Hong Kong On or before 2011
(expected)		 Incomplete
Note: 1 The two television operators financed the construction of some of the transmitters, and are required to lease to the other operator for digital television transmission use.

[edit] Set-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 [3].

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).

[edit] 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 [4].

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 [5].

[edit] 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:

Hong Kong Digital Television Channels
Broadcaster Channel Video Genre Frequency
No. Name Resolution Aspect ratio Format Band Range (MHz)
ATV 11 Home (Simulcast) 576i 16:9 MPEG-2 Entertainment M 1
12 News&Business Channel 3 H.264 News and
financial information		 37 598-606
13 His TV 3 Sports
14 Her TV 3 Fashion
15 Plus TV 3 Culture and nature
16 World (Simulcast) MPEG-2 Entertainment M 1
17 CCTV-4 4:3 H.264 Mandarin entertainment 37 598-606
19 aTV HD 3 1080i/720p 16:9 Entertainment
TVB 81 Jade (Simulcast) 576i 16:9 MPEG-2 Entertainment M 1
82 2 J2 3 H.264 Youth entertainment 35 582-590
83 2 Interactive Info. Channel 3 Interactive news
and financial information
84 Pearl (Simulcast) MPEG-2 Entertainment M 1
85 HD Jade 3 1080i/720p H.264 Entertainment 35 582-590
Notes:
  • 1 depends on the location of the transmission station as part of the multi-frequency network, e.g. the Tsz Wan Shan transmission station utilizes band 22 for simulcasting channels, with frequency of 478-486 MHz.
  • 2 denotes channels in test runs, official commencements is expected in Q1/Q2 2008.
  • 3 All of the digital channels are free-to-air in Macau and Guangdong Province, and viewers can receive these channels in any way, but, in Hong Kong, excepted the four simulcast analogue free-to-air channels and CCTV-4, the rest of the digital channels of ATV and TVB, totality 8 channels, should be landed in within the following stipulated confines only, until there's new comers, besides ATV and TVB, join the Hong Kong's free-to-air digital terrestrial television market:
    • government offices and statutory bodies, or
    • consulates-general and officially recognised bodies, or
    • guest houses and hotels ranked with four stars or above that receive foreign guests, or
    • apartment buildings exclusively for office and residential use by persons from abroad, or
    • clubs exclusively for serve persons from abroad, or
    • residential use by the family which included the person(s) directly employed by or retired from the following stipulated confines, such as:
      • departments and related organisations of the government of the HKSAR
      • office and branches of the Central People's Government in Hong Kong
      • consulates-general and officially recognised bodies
      • MTR Corporation, or
    • residential and apartment buildings allowed residents to receive Phoenix Chinese Channel and/or CETV(China Entertainment Television) and/or i-Cable Horizon through Satellite Master Antenna Television system(at least two of the three channels), or
    • residential that subscribed to PCCW's now TV(excepted TVB PAY VISION Special Pack and TVB PAY VISION Super Hit Pack) and/or i-Cable's Hong Kong Cable TV(excepted subscribers which subscribed to Cable No.1 Channel only), or
    • within other specially designated confines.

[edit] Reference

  1. ^ 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, 2008PDF
  2. ^ Estimated Coverage of Digital Terrestrial Television (7 transmitting stations), retrieved May 30, 2008PDF
  3. ^ Higher-tier set-top box label, and Basic-tier set-top box label, retrieved December 3, 2007
  4. ^ Paper: "Legislative Council Panel on Information Technology and Broadcasting on Progress in the Implementation of Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting", retrieved November 28, 2007 PDF (41.9 KiB)
  5. ^ TVB Interactive logo, retrieved December 3, 2007

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Digital television deployments by country
Africa
Asia
China · Hong Kong · Japan  · South Korea  · Malaysia  · Philippines  · Saudi Arabia  · Singapore · Taiwan
Australasia
Europe
The Americas
Languages