China gears up for DTV.

As China braces itself for transition from analog to digital cable, its TV and radio industries face pressure to offer value-added services and products in order to warrant the 300 percent fee increase. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has urged the industry to transform itself into a modern media and, with the deployment of digital TVs across the country, to convert TV sets into multimedia information terminals. To promote the fledgling market sector, Fujitsu Microelectronics is focusing on developing Smart-MPEG chip products for set-top boxes (STB) and FR-V chips for various other media devices.

STB is a crucial part of DTV broadcast, which transforms the analog signal to a digital one. FR-V can be adopted to make high-end projectors and various portable media viewers. Cost concerns and high expectations of the local market have led the Japan-based microelectronics firm to team-up with Chinese partners who will produce devices with Fujitsu chips inside.

Live digital TV transmission services via satellites and experimentation with terrain-based digital TV is expected to become available by 2005. By then, it is estimated that 30 million Chinese viewers will use DTV. The country will take advantage of the new services while broadcasting its 2008 Olympic Games, in Beijing.