China’s IPTV Users Increased 110%
By November 2007, China saw a total of 1.142 million IPTV subscribers, an increase of 110% from the comparable period one year ago, reflecting an industry is growing at a startling rate, according to Lou Qinjian, vice minister of the Ministry of Information Industry of the country.
In the meanwhile, an increasing number of companies are flocking into IPTV market with thousands and millions of investments in face of the huge potential in the sector.
Led by the ministry, eighteen companies including China Netcom, China Telecom, Huawei Technologies, ZTE, Starpoint, etc. co-founded the China Interactive Media Industry Association on December 14.
Members of the association consist of telecom carriers, contents providers, system and terminal manufacturers, chip makers, software developers, and instruments makers.
With full support from the ministry, the association will spare no efforts to boost up the development of AVS-based IPTV technologies and related applications.
Since 2006, the ministry kicked off tests on AVS-IPTV technologies, which is China’s homegrown interactive media standard with independent intellectual property.
So far China has set up the first AVS-IPTV pilot network of the world in Dalian, Liaoning province and came up with series of related set-top boxes.
Mr. Lou says that result of the tests indicates that it is doable for China to adopt its own AVS standard that has been submitted to the International Telecom Union to apply for international standard.
AVS, standing for Audio Video Coding Standard, is a streamlined, highly efficient video coder employing the latest video coding tools and dedicated to coding HDTV content, which is considered as part of a global IPTV standard being drafted by the International Telecommunication Union. China has fully intellectual property rights in it.
IPTV delivers scheduled TV programs and video-on-demand (VOD) via the IP protocol and digital streaming techniques used to watch video on the Internet. In order to receive and decode the images in realtime, the user requires either an IPTV set-top box or a computer and software-based media player.
IPTV enables a data-voice-video “triple play” service to be based entirely on IP because Internet access, voice over IP (VoIP) and IPTV all use the same IP packet format.
To compete with cable TV, the telephone companies have taken the lead with IPTV over DSL lines. Rather than tune into one of many video channels being transmitted simultaneously over cable TV, IPTV users request a particular channel, which is routed to the user like every resource on the Internet.
Tags: China-Netcom, China-Telecom, Huawei, ZTE