Hong Kong firms to choose digital terrestrial TV technology if mainland fails to adopt standard soon
With the prices of flat-panel digital televisions falling faster than originally expected, Hong Kong's free-to-air broadcasters may not wait for China to roll out its own digital terrestrial TV standard and instead choose a different technology as soon as the third quarter of this year, senior executives of market leader Television Broadcasts (TVB) said yesterday.
'We have underestimated' the speed at which digital TV would develop, and 'we need to catch up with the market trend', said TVB's assistant managing director George Chan after yesterday's annual general meeting.
TVB and rival Asia Television (ATV) plan to launch digital broadcasting no later than the end of 2007. So far, they have not decided which technical standard to adopt.
Both have been waiting for the mainland to adopt a new standard but if it does not become available by the end of this year, they may opt instead for the European DVB-T standard.
Thus far, China has not said when the new standard might be unveiled.
Broadcasters earlier said adoption of the mainland standard would give them greater economies of scale in both hardware and programming.
