Finland Beats Hong Kong to Ditch Analog TV
Finland will be the first country to turn off analog TV signal, in 2007. Hong Kong has announced they will turn theirs off in 2012. So what's keeping China from doing it completely if 4.4 million customers in various regions (Shenzhen, Qingdao, Suzhou, Foshan) already have digital TV ? China isn't moving the entire country at one time to digital TV, rather they are doing it region by region. It's hard to make large sweeping declarations of a set date to indefinitely kill analog because China hasn't agreed to one digital standard yet . Therefore, Hong Kong has already declared that they will go with the European DVB-T format if China doesn't decide on a standard by the end of this year. But that hasn't stopped the mainland's larger regions like Guandong, to start the digital move now.
Why is digital better than analog? Digital signal takes up less spectrum space than analog signal, therefore with all that freed up room on the spectrum, mean more channels, which means more niche delivery of tv shows, which means more money for advertisers, which means tivo can record your shows, which means higher cable bills.
The European Commission set 2010 as a digital switchover target for their members. Here are some country's target dates:
- Sweden, Norway, and Italy by 2008
- US and Denmark by 2009
- Germany, Belgian, and Spain by 2010
- Japan by 2011
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