More are expected to have the opportunity to indulge this new taste in people's daily entertainment if the trial run goes smoothly.

The group of participants will be given a digital box for use with their traditional TV sets and are expected to watch 21 channels mainly belonging to CCTV and Beijing TV, said Chen Yu, of the bureau's social management department.

"This is only a preliminary technology trial for transmitting digital signals," Chen explained, adding that it will still be a long time before it is available for all cable TV users.

The month-long experiment will test the digital TV-top box, which transmits digital signals to analogue sets and costs around 2,000 yuan (US$242), according to Chen.

"I assume the price of such boxes for digital TV programme will go down in the future for ordinary consumers," he said.

But there is also the cost of access to the digital system and the television programmes per year or per month.

Fifteen provincial cable television stations have been reported to be experimenting with digital television programmes.

Shanghai is expected to become China's first to run such programmes in September for a monthly fee of 50 yuan.

"But the digital programme content is still a problem," said Chen.

The programmes transmitted over the digital system in Beijing are mostly from traditional television stations.

There is still no special digital content provider.

Standards of high definition digital television are now being studied by the State Development Planning Commission and are expected to be issued by the end of 2003.

An official at the Radio, Film and Television Administration's science department said that at least 100,000 people would have digital television programmes by the end of this year.

(China Daily August 1, 2002)