I’m just curious (not that I have an opportunity to use it): Does Taiwan offer the same DVB-t as Europe does? So if I have a European DVB-t stick for my Laptop, can I watch TV in Taiwan? Or do they have some own standard?
Also, is it available everywhere in Taiwan (also in the countryside) or do they only have it in the big cities?
[quote=“Hellstorm”]I’m just curious (not that I have an opportunity to use it): Does Taiwan offer the same DVB-t as Europe does? So if I have a European DVB-t stick for my Laptop, can I watch TV in Taiwan? Or do they have some own standard?
Also, is it available everywhere in Taiwan (also in the countryside) or do they only have it in the big cities?[/quote]
It should work here. DVB-T itself is a standard I believe. You may have to go into the settings and change the country, then rescan for channels, but I’m not even sure if that’s necessary (although I think it is, if memory serves).
This is from DVB.org dvb.org/about_dvb/dvb_worldw … /index.xml
DVB-T Parameters
Multiplexes 5 in operation July 06
Operational bands UHF only
Carrier type 8k
Guard 1/8
FEC 1/2 mainly, some 3/4
Modulation 16QAM
Reception model Freeview, pay and Mobile
MFN and SFN MFN and SFN
Transmitter powers (not ERP)
5kW, 3.4kW, 400W, 100W
Middleware MHP
Channel bandwidth 6MHz
HDTV Network start in 2008
I’m not entirely sure if it’ll work or not, as the TVs here are NTSC, but apart from that, everything seems to be similar to at least some European countries, but the problem is that no one DVB-T setup is quite the same. It’s worth a try though, a half decent antenna here is only about NT$500, although I’ve only tried using it in Taipei and Taoyuan once or twice in the past, but the reception tends to be pretty good even with a small indoors antenna, although the stuff that comes with the USB sticks as standard isn’t always good enough.
[quote=“Hellstorm”]I’m just curious (not that I have an opportunity to use it): Does Taiwan offer the same DVB-t as Europe does? So if I have a European DVB-t stick for my Laptop, can I watch TV in Taiwan? Or do they have some own standard?
Also, is it available everywhere in Taiwan (also in the countryside) or do they only have it in the big cities?[/quote]
Taiwan has DVB-t, basically (but not totally) the same standard as Europe. Taiwan is the perhaps the only country to use 6 MHz channels, whereas Europe uses mostly VHF 7 MHz and UHF 8 MHz channels. Taiwan is also using H.264/MPEG-4 as a codec - this is also used in some European countries, but not all of them.
As for reception in the countryside, I live in a rural area of Taitung County, and we have a digital box for our TV. It does NOT work here with the included indoor antenna - I had to buy an external antenna and put it on the roof. With that it works pretty well, but I notice the reception deteriorates at night. In the city, I would expect the reception to be better, and perhaps no need for an external antenna.
Also, Wikipedia has an informative page on DVB-t:
So Hellstorm, I really can’t say if your device will work or not. You’ll have to test it. But please let us know your results, I’m curious.
By the way, it might be worth mentioning that there isn’t a whole lot on digital TV in Taiwan that is worth watching. If you’re looking for content in English, it’s almost non-existent. On PBS (channel 4) on weekdays, 11 pm to midnight, there is some American show. Currently they are showing reruns of “House” which is pretty good, but before that there were some stupid cop shows that were awful. The content varies from month to month, so don’t count on it being good.
cheers,
DB
I’m currently not in Taiwan, so it is more a hypothetical question. In retrospective, I think I should have bought a DVB-t USB stick for my computer when I was studying in Taiwan. Because I had no TV in my room, I could only watch it in some restaurants etc. This was not really nice viewing pleasure 
Might have been nice for a little bit studying, even if it is just news and stuff. Also, with DVB, you can just record the programme on your harddisk and watch it several times.
I also guess that Taiwanese TV programmes are really crappy, but isn’t it like that everywhere? Here in Germany, also almost no TV programmes are worth watching. But I wonder if Taiwan has some kind of state TV programme (like BBC in UK, NHK in Japan or ARD/ZDF in Germany)? They tend do have a little bit higher quality (although also not really as good as I would like them to have).
Actually about DVB-t: I have heard that Japan and America do not use DVB, so I thought that Taiwan would also adopt either the American or the Japanese standard. I’m a bit surprised they did not. Thanks! When I’m in Taiwan the next time (maybe in the next 5 years or so), I’ll check it out.
[quote=“Hellstorm”]
Actually about DVB-t: I have heard that Japan and America do not use DVB, so I thought that Taiwan would also adopt either the American or the Japanese standard. I’m a bit surprised they did not. Thanks! When I’m in Taiwan the next time (maybe in the next 5 years or so), I’ll check it out.[/quote]
Taiwan almost adopted the American standard, called ATSC, but I’m grateful that they didn’t. It was the first generation of digital TV, and is deficient in a number of ways. DVB-t was second generation and much better, and far more popular judging by the number of countries that have adopted it (Europe, Australia, most of Asia). Japan’s standard, ISDB-T, is a little more advanced and was adopted by most of South America, but due to software patents, the Japanese version is incompatible (and inferior to) South America’s.
Software patents (as opposed to copyright) sucks - it was an attempt by Microsoft, Apple and a few other big companies to basically outlaw their competition. It means you can patent something like the “Save as…” command, or the way a video gets displayed on your computer’s screen. Anyway, the compression codec mpeg4 is patented in America, so Japan (which was bulldozed into accepting software patents as part of a free-trade agreement) would have to pay billions in royalties - thus, they went with non-patented mpeg2. The South American countries ban software patents - good for them - so they went with the Japanese standard plus mpeg4. End result is that Japanese digital TV is inferior to South America’s, and Taiwan’s, though Taiwan could have adopted the South American standard (Taiwan doesn’t recognize software patents either).
China was the last big country to get digital TV, and they opted for their own incompatible standard, DMB-T/H. Why? They claim it’s technically superior. Personally, I suspect they did this so that Chinese people wouldn’t be able to easily watch foreign TV transmissions, though the range of digital TV makes that almost impossible in most parts of China (they might be able to pick up Hong Kong TV near the border). China also has it’s own separate region coding scheme for DVDs, for the same reason (don’t want the locals watching evil foreign movies).
[strike]DMB-T/H is not exclusive to China, trials were run in Europe, although I don’t think it took off cause it was crap, although South Korea is using it as well, although mostly -H for handheld devices…[/strike]
Ok, seems like I mixed up T-DMB with DMB-T, I guess it was an easy mistake to do…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mu … oadcasting
Oh, great for the info! I didn’t know about Software patents. I know we (luckily) don’t have them in Europe, but didn’t know it had such an impact of video standards. But the DVB we have in Germany is all Mpeg-2 (Except HDTV)? If I record something with a TV card or with my satellite receiver, I always get a Mpeg2 stream. 10 years ago, I just saved the stuff without recoding on a SVCD.
Europe is moving to DVB-T2 which is all MPEG-4, but one of the flaws of the DVB-T standard is that there are a few different sub versions of it. So in other words, it’s not guaranteed to be the same all over the world. However, with the USB sticks, it’s generally possible to change the specifics in software which tend to solve those kind of problems.
Does DVB-T here in Taiwan offer features like subtitles or 2nd audio programing (SAP) or a music channel? I hear there is an HD channel. What type of movies are on it? Western?
There are a few HD channels, some details here hihd.pts.org.tw/
As for the rest, I don’t know.
[quote=“TheLostSwede”]There are a few HD channels, some details here hihd.pts.org.tw/
As for the rest, I don’t know.[/quote]
I’ve got a question about HD. My TV is only about one year old, and is a low-end LCD model. The TV has ports for S-video, AV, YPbPr and HDMI. The digital signal converter box I bought (the only one on the market that I know of) has ports for AV and YPbPr, no HDMI (no S-video either, but that’s OK since it sucks). The guy at RT-Mart, where I bought it, says connect the TV to the box using AV. I tried that first, OK but not great - I switched it to YPbBr and it was much better.
Now the question: Assuming that any station is actually broadcasting in HD, do I have the equipment for watching HD TV? My understanding is that YPbPr is very good, but it’s still analog. Again, the TV has an HDMI port, but the converter box does not. Am I going to need another converter box, or am I good to go?
regards,
DB
I dunno what the signal is that HiHD transmits, but presumably it’s either 720p or 1080i, for which component video is good enough, as it does either. What component video doesn’t do is 1080p, but this is rarely used for broadcast transmissions.
I’ve got a stick from the local 3C store here in Xizhi but I can’t get any channels… .I wanted to watch the Olympics on Elta at work… :s is it the stick or is there simply no signal? Anyone using a dvb-t stick in Taipei area?