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To: John Rieman who wrote (25890)	11/30/1997 12:38:00 PM
From: BillyG	Respond to of 50808

Digital TV is a long way off in China.................... chinadaily.net China far from digital TV era CHINA'S first home-made digital television is rolling off the production line later this month, but industry experts still claim that given its current economic strength, the country is far away from embracing a real digital TV era. West Lake Electronics Group, based in Zhejiang Province's Hangzhou city, announced that it had by itself developed China's first-generation of digital TVs adopting digital 3000 series integrated circuits. The products will be available on the market soon. West Lake said the new TVs can receive the analogue signals from the television broadcasting stations and then transmit the analogue signals into digital ones. The company promised to do further research on developing TVs that can directly receive digital signals. "Although it can be defined as a digital TV which boasts a high display quality and is superior in anti-interference, it is not the same kind that the US plans to use to replace the current TVs in 2006," said Bai Weimin, a director of Broadcasting and TV with the Ministry of Electronic Industry (MEI). A true digital TV set should process the digital signals from receiving to broadcasting. But the West Lake TV digitizes just a small part of this process, Bai explained. In April, the US government made public that by 2006 all the broadcasting companies will be required to offer digital pro-grammes to people in the US. Industry observers believe that the US is breaking ground in this field not only because it wants to bring high-quality audio and video enjoyment to its people, but, more importantly, to prepare for the anticipating digital age which integrates broadcasting, telecommunications and computers. This new era promises people new picture pleasure and information abundance. All of these services can not be realized with current analogue broadcasting technology and TV sets. "As far as China is concerned, it probably will take more than 20 years from now," Bai said. "Actually, there is right now no timetable for this issue," she said. An official from the State Science and Technology Commission said such a comprehensive project is not just up to MEI which is responsible for the administration of manufacturing. Responsibility also lies with the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television which is the top manager of China's 1000-plus television stations. But both officials said the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television has not mapped out plans concerning this issue. In fact, a glimpse at the investment required to launch such a huge project in China, whose people have just switched from black/white TV fewer than ten years ago, might hinder China's policy-makers in making the decision. China has over 1,000 television stations and updating the equipment of one of these stations will require an average of $4-5 million. Also, China has brought in a number of large TV manufacturers and many of them are the main money-makers of the local economy. It will be a big headache for the manufacturers to invest a large amount of money in new facilities. More important, there are around 300 million TV sets being used in China. But who knows what response the common people will have if they are informed that their TVs are going to be obsolete and they will have to buy new ones? The official from the State Science and Technology Commission said new facilities, especially the transmitting equipment, will be digitized and some digital TV programmes will be made soon. Date: 11/26/97 Author: Wei Ke Copyrightc by China Daily