Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. and Changzhou Broadcast & television information network Co., Ltd., a leading cable TV company promoting digital TV broadcasting, announced that they have started a field trial with separate-type CA (conditional access) card and set top box (STB) in China.
The test started from mid November, will continue until mid December and will attempt to validate the functionality, performance and quality of the CA cards. Taking the results from this test, OKI will enhance the functions such as security for the CA cards.
China is planning to shift to digital broadcasting by 2015. Changzhou City was appointed by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television and is one of the first cities in China to conduct trial provisioning of 33 cable digital TV broadcasting. Changzhou CATV currently builds optical fiber network for HFC, ATM, GE networks.
"OKI has been contributing to the development of our city since 1997, and has been expanding its business in Changzhou City. We will work with OKI, who has advanced technologies, to contribute in a smooth shift to digital broadcasting by using separate-type CA cards and STBs ahead of other operators," said Zhang Bing, Board Chairman and Director at Changzhou Broadcast & television information network Co., Ltd. "China currently has approximately 400 million TVs, and Changzhou City plans to shift two million TVs to digital by 2010. With the separate-type CA card and STBs, and an STB can be a unified design no matter who the cable TV operator is as it can process the difference between the STB and CA, used by each CATV operators. And we believe this will help enable a smooth transition to broadcast digitalization.”
To watch digital broadcasting, viewers currently must have an STB, which comes in two types. One is with a built-in CA system, and the other is with a separate CA card, which requires users to insert the card in the STB to view pay-TV and protect program copyrights. OKI's separate-type CA card includes OKI's original hacking measurement functions. While many people in China use the built-in CA card for STBs, by separating the card, viewers can easily access various CATV operators simply by changing the card. Thus, there is no need to change STB designs, and STB vendors can reduce the STB cost through volume production. Digital broadcasting viewers can also purchase an STB at a lower price, which will contribute to the growth of digital broadcasting in China.”
Source:佚名