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Sales of HDTV sets to jump

(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-20 14:34

Sales of high definition television sets in China are expected to jump to 3.2 million units this year from only 970,000 sets last year.

Despite the two-fold increase, however, most HDTV owners are still unaware of the specifications of their TV sets, implying a general ignorance of the new medium, according to a study by Sino Market Research.

Awareness of HDTV is high in big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, with 98.2 percent of the respondents in Shanghai saying they have heard of HDTV. The figures for Beijing and Guangzhou are 84 percent and 76.1 percent respectively. The sample size for each city is 300.

But as many as 85 percent of HDTV owners surveyed said they did not know the resolution of their HDTV sets, Ye Ping, deputy general manger of Sino Market Research, said in a presentation at the first China HDTV Industry Development Forum held yesterday.

The event is organized by Shanghai Media Group and Discovery Channel.

"Most consumers who purchased HDTV did so out of a desire to raise the quality of life," he said. "They may not know much about HDTV."

While HDTV standards are yet to be available in China, the general standard is 720i, which stands for resolution of 1280x720 pixels.

China is expected to announce its digital broadcast standards at the end of the month.

Gao Yue, deputy general manager of Shanghai Interactive Television, the digital TV arm of SMG, urged more provinces to push for HDTV in order to create a healthy industry to stimulate the growth of the HDTV market.

The domestic HDTV market reached 19.4 billion yuan last year, after experiencing a period of cultivation from 2001 to 2004, Gao said at the forum.

However, there is a shortage of HDTV content to stimulate demand due to the higher cost of producing HDTV content.

"The production cost of HDTV content is 30 percent higher than standard TV production and content providers are not proactive enough," she said.

Currently, there are only four HDTV channels run by China Central Television, SiTV and China Film Group.

China has committed to broadcast the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games using HDTV technology.