Hong Kong's two terrestrial television broadcasters have decided to adopt the mainland's home-grown digital terrestrial television standard, a government spokesman said yesterday.
Television Broadcasts and its smaller rival Asia Television jointly submitted a proposal on digital television to the Office of the Telecommunications Authority.
'The government received the proposal last week and Ofta will make a final decision before the end of March,' the spokesman said.
Both broadcasters were required to decide which standard to adopt before the end of last year. They must begin digital broadcast services by the end of this year.
The mainland digital terrestrial television standard was developed by Beijing Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Both TVB and ATV have run laboratory tests of the mainland system in China and field tests in Hong Kong. 'The results of the tests were satisfactory so we decided to adopt the mainland standard in Hong Kong,' an industry source said.