Taipei – Taiwanese pubcaster PTS flagged of a new era in politics and broadcasting in Taiwan with the rollout of a trial HD free-to-air channel HiHD with the live broadcast of the inauguration ceremony for the Republic’s newly-elected president, Ma Ying-jeou on May 16, 2008 in Taipei. The National Communications Commission issue a one-year HDTV trial license to PTS at 566-572MHz for the May 15 launch of the HiHD service, which was extended May 20 to the island’s northern and southern cities of Taipei and Kaohsiung respectively. Two designated sites within the cities were equipped with large flat-LCD TV sets to demonstrate HDTV programming. Currently, HiHD channel offers programming including drama, documentary, music & infotainment, sports events including the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, and the arts. The channel airs four hours of new programmes per day from 8pm-12am and reruns the same shows for the rest of the day. Based on the consensus of industrial and government sectors, PTS adopted the 1920×1080/60i format with MPEG-4/H.264 compression for the HD service. IRDs with backward compatibility with SD compressed by MPEG-2 to be priced at US$233, are scheduled to be available in consumer electronic chain stores from May 2008. PTS is tapping on the National Government Grant of US$92million for technical and programming expenditure from 2007 – 2009. Backed by the Expanding Infrastructure Investment fund, PTS was also commissioned by media regulator, the Government Information Office (GIO) to rope in domestic players into the HiHD venture. The trial is to be evaluated by the GIO Steering Committee of the Expanding Infrastructure Investment Project, based on viewers’ satisfaction and indoor reception tests to determine the schedule for implementing its second and third phases of HiHD channel rollouts to the western and eastern parts of Taiwan respectively.
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