China’s digital TV standard

IEEE has an article about the digital TV standard that China rolled out in time for the Olympics.

Here are some highlights:

Being late in this particular game is not necessarily a bad thing. It allowed China to take advantage of advances in information-coding technologies that make digital television in China—unlike that in the rest of the world—work well even in bad weather. These technologies mean that China’s digital television can be viewed on the go; it won’t break up even at 200 kilometers per hour—you can watch a broadcast on a cellphone while sitting on a high-speed train. (The United States is only now trying to retrofit its digital-television standard for mobile reception.)

Development of what is formally called GB20600-2006 (GB stands for guo biao, “national standard” in Chinese) began in 2000 at China’s DTV Technology Research Center, in Beijing, established by my company, Legend Silicon Corp., of Fremont, Calif., and Tsinghua University, also in Beijing.

China plans to turn off the analog terrestrial television broadcast in 2015.

See original article, especially if you want more technical details. (Photo from Tim Wang’s eLearning Blog.)