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The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OTA) said on Wednesday (January 2) it had received over 300 enquiries since digital terrestrial television (DTT) services officially began on December 31, but only five complaints about picture quality of the traditional analogue broadcast.
The OTA said it was investigating the complaints, as some of them suspected the problem had been caused by interference from DTT signals, and reassured the public the two broadcasting systems should not interfere with each other.
It suspected the poor reception of analogue TV signals, mostly in Kowloon, was caused by technical errors when the public antennas on top of the residential buildings were upgraded to receive both digital and analogue broadcasting. Tenants living in those buildings who have analogue reception problems should contact their building management or ask the OTA for help.
A TV broadcasting expert told Wen Wei Po that many of the questions regarding DTT broadcasting actually have nothing to do with digital-analogue signal interference but rather concern the coverage area and technical issues such as wrong decoder (set-top box) or incompatible digital TV receiver that some wayward retailers hoodwinked customers into buying.
The government office also disclosed that it had received 49 applications from DTT decoder makers to join OTA's Voluntary Certification Scheme designed to protect consumer interest and subjected 23 models to standard testing. The results showed 16 upgraded decoders had basically passed, while those that had failed some tests had problems in surround-sound output, garbled subtitles or low sensitivity of signal reception. One basic model failed completely.
And on-site inspections at retail stores so far have revealed no basic model currently sold in Hong Kong fully complies with the government-issued standard, according to OTA. The retail price of upgraded models ranges from HK$1,600 to HK$2,600. ■春生 資深翻譯員
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