Television in Hong Kong is primarily in Cantonese and English. It is delivered through analogue and digital terrestrial, cable, IPTV, and the Internet. Satellite TV 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 and ViuTV.

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 Executive Council may refer to: Government * Executive Council (Commonwealth countries), a constitutional organ that exercises executive power and advises the governor * Executive Council of Bern, the government of the Swiss canton of Bern * Ex ...

decided not to renew ATV's broadcast licence and its channels closed. Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) was the territory's first free-to-air 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, opened in 1975 and operated for about three years until its bankruptcy (see

1970s in Hong Kong Hong Kong in the 1970s underwent many changes that shaped its future, led for most of the decade by its longest-serving and reform-minded Governor, Murray MacLehose. Economically, it reinvented itself from a manufacturing base into a financial c ...

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

HKTVE HK Television Entertainment Company Limited (, or HKTVE) is a television service operator in Hong Kong operated by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li's PCCW, through its subsidiary PCCW Media, which also owns an IPTV platform, Now TV and operati ...

, commonly known as ViuTV started broadcasting in 2016, digital-only, with a Cantonese channel and an English channel. In May 2017, Fantastic Television started digital free-to-air broadcasting, but after a year they moved their content to HKCTV. There was also an Internet television and VOD channel called Hong Kong Technology Venture (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 TVs, set-top boxes, 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 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, Cantonese,

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. * '' Now TV (PCCW-HKT Interactive Multimedia Services Ltd)'': provides 25 free channels and over 200 pay channels with programmes broadcast in English language (Supreme Sports Pack, World Entertainment Pack 1 & 2, Movies Pack 1 & 2, International News Pack, Kids Pack, Knowledge Pack), Cantonese,

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

Satellite TV

* '' Phoenix Television'': also broadcast in Greater China

Programming

Hong Kong's soap drama, comedy series and variety show 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 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) 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 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 video codec was implemented for all DTT-only channels. For the audio codec, usual DTMB set-top boxes would support MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (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 for 5.1 surround sound 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 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, ViuTVsix, ViuTV, RTHK TV 31,

RTHK TV 32 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 ...

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