TVB expands digital offering

Hong Kong - Leading Hong Kong broadcaster TVB is aggressively expanding its digitisation, launching an interactive TV services on 8 August, in a boost to the industry's digital terrestrial TV services.

The joint effort by Hong Kong Applied Science & Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), Hong Kong & Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) and TVB, aims to increase the broadcasters viewership during the Olympic Games by offering interactive data television services and 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound on free TV.

TVB will roll out the interactive TV services in various phases, with the "TV Bar" already on trial since last week on HD Jade and J2. The "TV Bar" makes information such as weather, stock index, news headlines and Olympic Medals list available at the touch of a button.

S K Cheong, GM of TVB Broadcasting, emphasised consumers must choose higher tier set-up boxes that bear the TVB interactive logo to avail of the new features.

"The industry consortium for improving the Hong Kong Profile (the DTT middleware standard) is being set up, the live broadcast of real applications has commenced, a labeling scheme has been set up and set-top-boxes/IDTVs that can work with these applications are available in the market," he said.