Television in Hong Kong is primarily in Cantonese and English. It is delivered through analogue and digital

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...

, and the Internet.

Satellite TV Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commo ...

is not common, although many housing estates have dishes and re-distribute a limited number of free channels through coaxial cables. The dominant broadcaster is

TVB Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) is a television broadcasting company based in Hong Kong SAR. The Company operates five free-to-air terrestrial television channels in Hong Kong, with TVB Jade as its main Cantonese language service, and ...

and

ViuTV ViuTV is a Cantonese language Generalist channel, general entertainment television channel in Hong Kong operated by HK Television Entertainment (HKTVE), whose parent company PCCW also operates the IPTV platform Now TV (Hong Kong), Now TV and the ...

History

Hong Kong's television history began with the launch of Rediffusion Television (RTV) on 29 May 1957 (later renamed as Asia Television (ATV)). RTV started off as a cable subscription service but became a free-to-air broadcaster in 1973, with Cantonese and English channels. In April 2016, the Executive Council decided not to renew ATV's broadcast licence and its channels closed. Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) was the territory's first

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the FTA Receiver, appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring ...

commercial station (launching in 1967) and remains the predominant TV broadcaster today with multiple Cantonese channels and one English channel, on analogue and digital. A short-lived network, known as

Commercial Television Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship. It was the United States′ first model of radio (an ...

, opened in 1975 and operated for about three years until its bankruptcy (see 1970s in Hong Kong). Government-owned Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) (a radio broadcaster from 1949) starting making TV programmes in 1976 - to be aired on TVB and ATV and later on HKCTV and

Now TV Now most commonly refers to the present time. Now, NOW, or The Now may also refer to: Organizations * Natal Organisation of Women, a South African women's organization * National Organization for Women, an American feminist organization * No ...

. In 2016, RTHK took over the analogue frequency of ATV and now also has its own digital channels HKTVE, commonly known as

started broadcasting in 2016, digital-only, with a Cantonese channel and an English channel. In May 2017,

Fantastic Television Fantastic Television Limited () is a commercial free-to-air television broadcasting company in Hong Kong owned by i-Cable Communications, which also owns Hong Kong Cable Television (Cable TV). Fantastic Television draws resources and programming ...

started digital free-to-air broadcasting, but after a year they moved their content to HKCTV. There was also an

Internet television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...

and VOD channel called

Hong Kong Technology Venture Hong Kong Technology Venture Company Limited (HKTV, ) is a Hong Kong-based technology company primarily known for its e-commerce platform and once had plans to become a television station. HKTV currently provides an over-the-top shopping and e ...

(HKTV, owned by the City Telecom, which was renamed as the same name in 2013) which was launched in 2014 and can be viewed on

smart TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a techno ...

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

es, personal computers, smartphones, and tablet computers, then closed in 2018. And ATV was revived as the OTT platform in 2017 and is still running today.

Subscription networks

* ''

Cable TV Hong Kong Hong Kong Cable Television Limited (), formerly known as Wharf Cable Television Limited () until 31 October 1998, is a cable television provider in Hong Kong currently owned by Forever Top (Asia) Limited, which operates it as a part of i-Cable ...

(Hong Kong Cable Television Ltd)'': controlled by

Forever Top Forever Top (Asia) Limited () is a company based in Hong Kong founded by , the current head of Far East Consortium. The company initially applied for a free-to-air television broadcast licence under the name of New Asia Network (NAN; ), but it ...

, operates over 100 channels with programmes broadcast in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

Putonghua Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...

and other languages. * ''

(PCCW-HKT Interactive Multimedia Services Ltd)'': provides 25 free channels and over 200 pay channels with programmes broadcast in

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

(Supreme Sports Pack, World Entertainment Pack 1 & 2, Movies Pack 1 & 2, International News Pack, Kids Pack, Knowledge Pack),

, Japanese and Korean (Chinese Movies Pack & Asian Entertainment Pack), Pinoy (Filipino Pack), French (French Pack) and Indian (Indian Pack 1-3). * ''

's MyTV Super''

Satellite TV

* ''

Phoenix Television Phoenix Television is a majority state-owned television network that offers Mandarin and Cantonese-language channels that serve mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and other markets with substantial Chinese-language viewers. It is operated by ...

'': also broadcast in

Greater China Greater China is an informal geographical area that shares commercial and cultural ties with the Han Chinese people. The notion of "Greater China" refers to the area that usually encompasses Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in East A ...

Programming

Hong Kong's soap drama, comedy series and

variety show Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical theatre, musical performances, sketch comedy, magic (illusion), magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is ...

productions reach mass audiences throughout the Cantonese-speaking, and even Mandarin-speaking, world.

Regulatory control

Television in Hong Kong is not subject to China's regulatory or 'content' control and is under the purview of the

Communications Authority The Communications Authority is a statutory body responsible for licensing and regulating the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in Hong Kong. It was formed in 2012 through a merger of the Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority, Television ...

in Hong Kong.

Digital terrestrial television

Hong Kong was not required to follow China's DTT standard, but the Hong Kong government nevertheless opted to use DMB-T/H (now known as

DTMB DTMB (Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast) is the digital TV standard for mobile and fixed devices, developed in the People's Republic of China. It is used there and in both of their special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau), and ...

) as the digital terrestrial television broadcast standard in 2004 (hence rejecting the

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Febr ...

standard originally proposed in 1998 and trialled in 2000). The official start of DTT broadcasting was at 7pm on 31 December 2007 as the first digital TV signal transmitter in

Tsz Wan Shan Tsz Wan Shan () is a residential area in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Located below Temple Hill, it is administratively part of Wong Tai Sin District. (Note that Temple Hill is also called ''Tsz Wan Shan'' , but Tsz Wan Shan usually refers to the ar ...

went online. In October 2007, both broadcasting companies agreed to use the

MPEG2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, w ...

video standard for broadcasting free-to-air channels (TVB Jade, ATV Home, TVB Pearl and ATV World); the

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

video codec was implemented for all DTT-only channels. For the audio codec, usual DTMB

es would support

MPEG-1 Audio Layer II MPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II (MP2, sometimes incorrectly called Musicam or MUSICAM) is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3). While MP3 is m ...

(MP2) for

stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

audio tracks, and

Dolby AC-3 Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3, is the name for what has now become a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Formerly named Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, the audio compression is lossy ...

for 5.1

surround sound Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener ( surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to sur ...

audio tracks. The official specification defines standard-definition broadcasting as

576i 576i is a standard-definition television, standard-definition digital video mode, originally used for digitizing analog television in most countries of the world where the utility frequency for electric power distribution is 50 Hz. Because ...

at 50 fields per second and high-definition broadcasting in

720p 720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready, standard HD or just HD) is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HDTV (1.78:1). All major HDTV broadcast ...

at 50 Hz or

1080i 1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the screen. ...

at 50 Hz. All major transmitters were completed by 2008, covering at least 75 percent of the Hong Kong population. The current coverage reaches 99% of the population. Full digital television broadcasts began on 1 December 2020, postponed from the originally planned date in 2015. Starting 1 December 2021, six digital television channels (being

TVB Jade TVB Jade (), or simply Jade, is a Hong Kong Cantonese-language free-to-air television channel owned and operated by Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) as its flagship service, alongside its sister network, the English-language TVB Pearl. Br ...

ViuTVsix ViuTVsix is a free-to-air English language general entertainment television channel in Hong Kong operated by HK Television Entertainment (HKTVE), whose parent company, PCCW, also operates IPTV platform Now TV and media streaming service Viu. Th ...

RTHK TV 31 RTHK TV 31 (, formerly RTHK TV 31A for analogue TV) is a 24-hour Chinese-language free-to-air television channel in Hong Kong, owned by RTHK. It is one of RTHK's three channels alongside RTHK TV 32 and RTHK TV 33 on digital terrestrial televisi ...

, RTHK TV 32 and

RTHK TV 33 Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) is the public broadcasting service in Hong Kong. GOW, the predecessor to RTHK, was established in 1928 as the first broadcasting service in Hong Kong. As a government department under the Commerce and Econom ...

) will transit from frequencies in the 600/700 MHz bands to the 500 MHz band to support and boost telecommunication services for applications like 5G networks as well as improving network coverage. A six-month transition stage from 1 April will simulcast TV channels on both existing and new frequencies to smoothen the transition.

References

External links

Hong Kong Government digital TV website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Television In Hong Kong