“I’ve heard that you soon won’t be able to use old TVs anymore, that you’ll have to buy a new TV to watch shows. Is that true?” asks a Mr. Chen.

Chen was visiting the E-Life Mall store near Tai­pei’s New Year’s Market, browsing the home electronics a few days before the Lunar New Year. Seeing posters all over the store announcing the switch to digital, he became concerned.

“What’s digital TV?” “What’s high-definition TV?” “Is this going to affect what I see on TV?”

Before delving into these questions, it may help to take a look at television broadcasting technology.

The growing number of relay transmitters has brought digital television coverage to 96% of Taiwan’s TV audience. In the photo, GIO minister Philip Yang attends a ceremony last year marking the start of HiHD high-definition broadcasts in central Taiwan. (courtesy of the GIO).

In the old days, people largely relied on outdoor antennas to pick up the analog OTA signals broadcast by TV stations. Their TVs then converted that signal into images and sound.

Analog signals are continuous, directional, and extremely susceptible to interference. If the weather was bad or your antenna mispositioned, you’d likely see snow, ghosting, or other visual noise on your TV.

Since many people had no place to mount an outdoor antenna and picture quality even with an external antenna was unstable, the US began developing “shared antenna networks” as early as the 1940s. These consisted of a primary antenna, an amplifier, and cable running from the amplifier to customers’ homes. Such a setup mounted atop an apartment building could resolve the reception problems of every resident in the building.

Later advances in high-output broadband amplifier technology allowed cable television systems to extend coverage to neighborhoods and even entire cities, giving us today’s ubiquitous cable TV.

Cable TV systems transmit TV networks’ analog signals directly into customers’ homes by means of coaxial cabling. Because the signal experiences little interference, reception is much better than that of a standard outdoor antenna.

Taiwanese customers have been enjoying cable TV for more than 30 years. It got its start here in the mid-1970s when electricians in Kee­lung and in Tai­pei’s Shi­pai area began running cable, airing unlicensed content, and selling their neighbors set-top boxes.

Because cable alleviated reception problems and provided a much greater variety of programming, it quickly gained popularity and spread throughout the island. Even before the passage and promulgation of 1993’s Cable Radio and Television Act, cable TV had a 70% penetration rate in Taiwan. Today, Taiwan has a penetration rate of 80%—high by global standards—and more than 100 cable stations.

People living in remote areas with poor TV reception often use satellite dishes to receive satellite broadcasts of analog TV. The NCC plans to offer such people assistance in buying set-top conversion boxes to go with their satellite receivers when Taiwanese TV goes all digital. The photo shows Tannan Village in Xinyi Township, Nantou County.

Reacting against analog TV’s many shortcomings, nations around the world have been studying and developing digital alternatives since the 1980s.

Albert Hsieh, secretary-general of the Taiwan Digital Television Committee (DTVC), explains that “digital TV” digitizes and compresses analog signals, converting sound and images into a binary code similar to that used by a computer.

Digital television’s greatest advantage is that it is highly resistant to interference. All you need to pick up the signal is a small interior antenna mounted near a window. You can even get reception in a car.

Digital television can also offer superior resolution. The NTSC analog standard used in Taiwan consists of just 525 scanlines per frame, whereas digital television can be broadcast at resolutions as high as 1920 x 1080 pixels, a figure equivalent to 1080 scanlines.

Digital television offers the advantage of improved spectrum utilization, too. Cheng Chuan-ping, director of the NCC’s Northern Region Supervisory Department, explains that in the past an analog TV channel occupied 6 MHz of bandwidth. Now, with signal compression, the same bandwidth can carry three or four standard-definition digital channels (SDTV, which has a maximum resolution of 720 x 480) or one high-definition channel (HDTV, at a resolution of 1920 x 1080) plus two SDTV channels, greatly increasing the programming options available to viewers.

As high-definition digital TV sets have gone mainstream, their prices have continued to decline.

With virtually every country on earth developing it, digital TV has propelled the public airwaves into the vanguard of an audiovisual revolution.

The developed nations of Europe and the Americas have been rolling out OTA digital television since 1998, and Taiwan carried out its first test broadcast of a digital TV signal in the western part of the island in June of 2002.

Taiwan’s five OTA television stations began official broadcasts of 15 digital channels in June 2004, kicking off a transitional period in which analog and digital have been broadcast side by side. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) originally planned to reclaim the analog frequencies in use by OTA networks in 2006, but the rollout of digital TV went more slowly than expected.

Philip Yang, minister of the Government Information Office (GIO), says that the Association of Terrestrial Television Networks, Taiwan, an organization put together by the five OTA networks, estimated that going completely digital would be very costly for the networks, requiring each to spend a minimum of NT$1.5 billion on new equipment.

In addition, ATTNT predicted that prices for digital-enabled TVs and set-top boxes would be high in the period following the rollout of OTA digital TV, meaning only a small proportion of the population would be willing to upgrade. With few viewers, advertising revenues would be low, leaving the networks with even less incentive to buy the new equipment and produce high-quality digital programming.

Now, prices have fallen and the hardware required to view digital TV has become ubiquitous. Domestically made high-definition TVs with a 32-inch screen and built-in digital tuners cost less than NT$10,000 and high-definition digital set-top boxes are available for less than NT$3,000.

For the moment, all of the commercial digital OTA programming being broadcast in Taiwan—we currently have 15 digital OTA channels—is in standard definition.

Taiwan’s only high-definition programming is on the HiHD channel that the GIO commissioned the Public Television Service to create. HiHD began broadcasting in Tai­pei and Kao­hsiung in May of 2008, and carries 16 hours a day of high-definition programs.

Since 2006, the GIO has also been helping TV producers create their own high-definition programs. To date, it has contributed nearly NT$1 billion to the production of 169 shows that have been watched a total of 24 million times, garnering an average viewership of 1.06% of Taiwan’s TV audience. Most of these programs, which have included drama series such as Ni ­Yada, Down with Love, and Love You / While We Were Drunk, have been well received by both audiences and critics.

Producing shows in high definition is extremely expensive. The necessary investments in new studio space, cameras, and encoding and broadcasting equipment, make the shows cost three times as much as standard-definition programs. HiHD has been doing trial broadcasts for nearly four years now, but remains unable to obtain its official operating license because it has yet to overcome the problem of frequent reruns.

Nonetheless, a turning point may be approaching. Yang says that programming purchases, in-house productions, outsourced productions, and the GIO-subsidized purchase of high-definition broadcast rights to the London Olympics will provide HiHD with an estimated 2,000 hours of new programming this year, at least 30% of which will be airing for the first time anywhere. If HiHD can secure an official broadcast license, the legal requirement that at least 70% of its programming be domestically produced will ensure high-definition programming becomes much more common.

With the digital-television revolution looming nigh, consumers who don’t yet have the equipment necessary to enjoy the new technology will need to do their homework.

On the hardware side of things, the DTVC estimates that Taiwanese shipments of digital TVs total 2.5 to 3 million units to date, split evenly between standard-definition and high-definition models. Shipments of set-top converters are also approaching 3 million units (largely of standard-definition models). That suggests that some 75% of Taiwan’s 8 million households already possess the equipment necessary to view digital TV.

The May 7 rollout of OTA digital TV will have no impact at all on subscribers to cable TV or Chunghwa Telecom’s MOD service.

The other 15% of the public who currently watch only OTA analog TV will have to check to see whether their home TVs can receive a digital signal. If they can’t, they’ll need to buy a set-top box or a new TV.

The NCC’s Cheng recommends that members of the public who need to buy new equipment go ahead and get a digital-capable HDTV so they can enjoy the high-definition programming on HiHD. Otherwise, they’ll be limited to the standard-definition fare on the other 15 channels.

When Japan shifted to exclusively digital OTA broadcasts last year, there were more than 200,000 phone calls from angry viewers in the first few days. Seeking to avoid a similar problem in Taiwan, the NCC has set up a toll-free hotline (0800-2012-06) where the public can get answers to their questions about digital TV.

The NCC plans to issue two new high-definition digital OTA broadcast licenses on top of the 16 OTA channels that currently exist, meaning that Taiwan will have 18 OTA channels in the near future. Meanwhile, cable is expected to go entirely digital by the end of 2014.

Will updating OTA TV change Taiwanese viewing habits?

Albert Hsieh thinks that TV stations are the crux of the issue. If they work hard to produce and air quality programs, they may be able to break the cable TV providers’ current lock on the market.

“OTA TV is free to watch,” says Hsieh, “whereas cable costs several hundred NT dollars or more per month. If digital OTA stations can satisfy viewers’ basic needs, viewers annoyed at the cable companies’ ‘all you can eat’ business model may very well give up cable.”

As audiovisual entertainment enters the digital age, viewers need more than ever to make intelligent choices and take charge of their own TV viewing.