Press release; Adam Connors, DigiTimes.com [Wednesday 17 April 2002]
Taiwan-based digital STB (set-top box) supplier Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB) announced that it has signed an agreement with China Network Systems (CNS) a Koos Group (Taiwan) and News Corp STAR TV joint venture in wiring its Taiwan cable-subscriber households to digital TV by 2005.
Taiwan has the highest cable TV penetration rate in the Asia-Pacific region, with five million cable-subscriber households, or 80% of TV households, covered. The population of Taiwan is over 22 million. CNS is currently the leading analog cable TV provider in Taiwan with over one million viewers, whom it hopes to have fully upgraded to digital TV within three years.
ADB will provide its ABQ6H44 STB, incorporating the STMicroelectronics (ST) Sti5512 multimedia chip processor and a Microtune MT2040 chipset-based in-house tuner to the rollout. Systems integration and end-to-end digital broadcasting solutions will be handled by NDS Group, another News Corp company. According to NDS, from a statement on January 29, upgrades will begin on the network in the second quarter of 2002.
Related stories:
Accton rumored to have received Microsoft cable modem orders (Jan 17)
CHT to launch movies-on-demand in 1Q 2002 (Nov 16, 2001)
A look at Taiwan’s STB industry (May 28, 2001)
