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

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 med ...

, 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 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 appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...

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 (a ...

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

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 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 techn ...

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 s ...

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-Cabl ...

(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 ...

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 a ...

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 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 ...

(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). * '' TVB'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 ...

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 performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a co ...

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, Televisio ...

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 Feb ...

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

es 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 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 s ...

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

576i 576i is a 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 of its close association wit ...

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 broadcas ...

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 scree ...

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, 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