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Digital TV to begin broadcasts by year end

ATV and TVB to start high-resolution services

After years of delay, digital broadcasting that promises crystal-clear images will become a reality by the end of the year.

The Office of the Telecommunications Authority said yesterday the two terrestrial TV broadcasters, Asia Television and Television Broadcasts, will adopt the mainland's national standard to transmit digitally by the end of the year.

But to get the high-resolution broadcasts, viewers will need to buy new compatible TV sets and receivers, the first batch of which will hit the market in three to six months. Seven manufacturers such as Japanese brand Sharp will produce the new digital TVs.

The government and TV broadcasters will take five years to migrate all existing viewers to digital programmes from the present four analogue channels.

Viewers may opt for a standard digital receiver, which costs a few hundred dollars, or an upgraded one, which, at thousands of dollars, can display the full effects of digital broadcasting such as TVB's 'surround sound' and high resolution images.

ATV will add four new channels on standard definition digital format to transmit business and entertainment news, and TV shopping. TVB will also provide four new channels, of which three will offer high-definition programmes no less than 14 hours a day.

The existing TVB Jade and Pearl, ATV Home and World Channels will be aired in both digital and existing analogue platforms.

By using the new digital broadcasting technology, Ofta assistant director Danny Lau Kwong-cheung said viewers would no longer suffer the effects of signal interference by skyscrapers, unlike the present analogue broadcasts.

ATV and TVB will together build 29 digital transmission stations to cover all of Hong Kong no later than 2011. The first station at Temple Hill, whose service will start this year, will cover 40 to 50 per cent of households, mainly in the northern part of Hong Kong Island and the urban central Kowloon area.

By next year, more than 75 per cent of households will be covered as five more stations commence the service.

TVB will invest more than HK$300 million in building its digital network, said TVB general manager Cheong Shin-keong. It is spending about HK$400 million on new digital programmes.

ATV has invested around HK$600 million on the network and programmes production. As part of a drive to make Hong Kong a hi-tech hub under the administration of former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, the government had pushed for an early adoption of digital broadcasting and had performed tests as early as 1999.

An overly optimistic forecast made in late 2000 in a government consultation paper predicted ATV and TVB would be rolling out digital broadcasts by 2003. But this involved adopting overseas broadcasting standards, a move that both stations had refused to follow, arguing they should - as is now the case - adopt the mainland standard.

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