According to Screen Digest, digital-terrestrial TV is going to grow significantly in China. Although initially driven by cable, China’s televisual growth is now being further fuelled by digital over-the-air transmission, says Screen Digest. China is now estimated to have 390m TV households, of which about 180m are cable subscribers. Digitally-equipped homes are said to be about 3.9m connected via DTT, 2m IPTV users and officially about 60,000 DTH viewing homes. The remaining are analogue-terrestrial viewers. DTT is subsidised by China’s State Administration of Radio Film & Television (SARFT) and state-backed CCTV. By the end of this year the intention is to have DTT signals covering 37 large cities, 360 small-to-medium cities and 485 villages. Frequency coordination is a major challenge, but by the end of 2011 SARFT expects to have 2861 more towns covered, and a further 2000 cities by 2012. Technical coverage should reach more than 90% by 2015, in readiness for a promised analogue switch off planned for 2015. Screen Digest forecasts ‘significant’ DTT growth, doubling next year followed by rapid growth in 2011 and 2012, and says that by 2013 there will probably be more than 74m DTT homes.