China's Digital TV Industry to Unveil Bright Picture

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, August 14, 2003

China's Digital TV Industry to Unveil Bright Picture

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Chinese television stations are scheduled to launch a batch of new channels in September, featuring digital broadcasting and pay-per-view service. This will mark the start of China's ambitious digitization plan.

According to a recent scheme formulated by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), China will soon promulgate its own high resolution digital TV standards, sign up one million cable digital TV subscribers and kick off 10 commercial broadcasting channels nationwide by the end of this year.

The plan is for China to stop sending analog signals by 2015, and the State Administration also plans to transmit high-definition digital programs of the Beijing Olympics to the world in 2008, according to the scheme.

China, with a population of 1.3 billion, boasts 370 million TV sets and 1.2 billion TV viewers, the largest number in the world.

But the present cable network in major cities is only capable of transmitting 40 to 50 channels simultaneously at most, leaving no room for further development, while digital TV provides a better solution by allowing for 400 to 500 channels, said Wang Xiaojie, a senior official with SARFT.

China has been the world's largest color TV manufacturer. A host of large Chinese TV enterprises are now monitoring the finalization of digital TV standards, which will help increase the competitiveness of the whole industry in the country and offer great potential to tap, Wang said.

To fulfill the digitalization plan, Chinese officials said they have also created a database for digital programs which now boasts several thousand hours of homemade programs and ten times more imported contents.

"Specialized informative or entertaining programs will cater to digital TV customers," Wang said.

Digital TV industry promises broad business prospects ranging from transmission to reception, said Yang Weiguang, a scholar with Beijing Broadcasting Institute.

By adding a set-top-box, a decoding device and a "smart card" provided by local cable companies, a traditional cable TV set willbe able to recognize the digital signal.

The output value of digital receiving terminals, set-top-boxes,digitization system solutions and other services are estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars by the insiders.

"TV digitization in China will become another consumption hot spot, which will benefit all related industries and probably lead a restructuring of the market," said Yang.

Some Chinese cities and regions have already carried out digital television broadcasts on a trial basis. But compared with the target number, the current 5,000 digital TV users is but a trickle. China still has a long way to go digital, analysts say.

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