Era of Digital Broadcasting

A unique preview of a special drama celebrating the 30th anniversary of the foundation of KBS, ‘Story of Scented Well’, will be held at Daehan Cinema at 10:30 on Feb. 26.

The reason that a TV drama, not a movie, is previewed at a theater with the most up-to-date sound facility is that the product is an ‘advanced drama’ produced for digital broadcasting.

The image quality of the HD drama exceeds that of DVD. Furthermore, for the sound of the drama, 5.1 Channel, which used to be for home theater, was used. Ahn Young-dong, the chief editor of TV drama station, said that therefore, the special drama would deliver the realism fresher than general movies.

▽Digital broadcasting still fails to meet expectations.

Kim Tae-shik, 36, a football fan, treated himself to a digital TV set in June, 2002, during the World Cup. He could enjoy high-quality images that enabled him to see even sweat on soccer players` face. But he complains that few TV programs offer as lively images of digital TV as World Cup matches.

Korean Broadcasting Commission obliged terrestrial TV broadcasting companies to produce HD programs of more than 10 hours per week last year (more than 13 hours starting from this spring). But due to cost, they still put focus on morning talk shows, rather than on wildlife documentaries or dramas that can deliver the essence of HD.

Therefore, even though about 1,130,000 digital TV sets have been distributed in Korea, only 110,000 TV sets are capable of receiving digital broadcasting. It is because viewers with separation-type digital TV sets have to buy set-top box additionally to watch digital broadcasting. Single unit TV sets could resolve the problem, but there is still lack of attention to such TV sets.

▽Will the year 2003 be the first year of an active digital broadcasting service?

Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) sees that the number of households watching digital broadcasting would increase as dramatically as the wide penetration of digital TV sets this year.

“The price of set-top box has dropped from 1 million won to 300,000 won to 400,000 won. Furthermore, HD TV receiving card, which enables users to watch digital broadcasting without set-top box by linking the card to digital TV sets after installing it on PC, costs around 160,000,” said Lee Jae-hong, a section chief in charge of broadcasting satellite at MIC. “The number of households watching the digital broadcasting would soar to as many as 400,000 until December.”

In addition, broadcasting companies increasingly produce HD programs whose quality level is being improved. Thus, such factors are likely to encourage consumers to watch the digital broadcasting.

In the mean time, some argue that Korea should introduce European digital broadcasting mode, stopping the service of the current American one. But setting aside whether the argument is appropriate or not, experts and the parties concerned in the industry forecast that as the American mode already became a standard, it would be hard to reverse the policy on the issue.

▽Digital TV, the second mobile handset

Domestic TV manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, exported $964 million worth of 790,000 digital TV sets to foreign markets last year. In particular, they delivered 360,000 sets to North America, accounting for 15 percent of the largest digital TV market in the world. But they are still behind Japanese counterparts like Sony in terms of market share.

As domestic TV makers are ahead of Japanese ones in technical capabilities, Korean digital TV sets are not treated as unkindly as analog TV in the global market. Domestic companies have an advantage over their Japanese rivals because they are excellent in the area of display, core parts of digital TV sets, and produce their own displays like LCD and PDP projection.

In particular, as the U.S. government is to make the digital broadcasting mandatory by 2007, starting in 2004, the country is expected to emerge as a huge market. Accordingly, there is likely to be a replacement demand of about 100 million TV sets until 2010.

As a matter of fact, exports of digital TV sets are rising high this year. “Export volumes in Jan. and Feb. were three times as many as in the same period of last year,” said one source of the industry. “If this trend continues, TV makers will have no difficulty posting at least $2 billion in export.”

MIC forecasts that the production volume of Made-in-Korea digital TV sets for domestic use and exports combined would reach 5.7 million units to account for 22 percent of the global market by 2005 and that consequently, Korean manufacturers are likely to face a fierce competition with Japanese counterparts.

Jong sik Kong kong@donga.com