By Zhuang Guangping

"Against the background of innovation and integration, China's audio and video industry is surpassing the competition of products and entering the competition of industrial ecological system." At 2009 annual conference of China's audio and video industry, Bai Weimin, Secretary General of China Video Industry Association (CVIA), expressed as concluding the development ecology of audio and video industry.

China is the largest country of producing and selling audio and video products worldwide. Over the past 30-odd years of reform and opening up, China's audio and video industry has developed from radios and black-and-white televisions to a relatively complete industrial system taking complete appliance as main body, matched components and parts as support, with basically complete variety and specification, increasingly expanded economic scale and remarkably improved technical level.

Besides meeting the huge demand of domestic market, Audio and video industry has also dealt in export on a large scale. The industrial scale has expanded by more than 25 folds from RMB15.1 billion yuan in 1987 to over RMB400 billion yuan in 2007 with the compound annual growth rate of 18.1 percent.

In the new era, audio and video industry has shown a new development trend of digitalization, networking and multi-technology integration. The industrial scale and international competitive strength have been improved obviously.

The step of analog-to-digital conversion is accelerated

Broadcasting & TV industry is the first big sub-industry of audio and video industry, occupying about 20 percent of the scale of China's entire electronic information industry. The tide of digital television conversion starting in 1999 has urged the generation of huge market scale. Data shows that currently, there are 350 million TV users in China, among which there are 120 million cable TV users while others are satellite and ground digital TV users.

On the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of PRC in 1999, China has realized digital high definition broadcasting for the first time. Over the past ten years, the step of analog-to-digital conversion in broadcasting & TV industry is accelerated increasingly, which has spurred huge market opportunities. In 2003, China initiated the digital cable TV conversion all around. As introduced by Bai Weimin, so far, the number of China's digital cable TV users has exceeded 50 million with the annual growth of more than 70 percent. It is estimated by a market research institute CCID Consulting that the number of China's digital cable TV users will reach 114.7 million by 2011, and the complete digitalization will be realized basically.

In terms of ground digital TV market, "In 2009, the frequency planning for prefecture-level cities has been accomplished, and the nationwide network construction has been implemented." Li Yixing, Director of Wireless Institute, Academy of Broadcasting Planning, State Administration of Radio Film and Television, introduced that there have been 109 cities implementing ground digital TV broadcasting this year. "The upgrade of ground TV broadcasting digitalization will create a market scale valued more than RMB100 billion yuan."

The expedition of digital TV's complete conversion has promoted the development of China's tuner industry. Digital tuners are widely applied in such product fields as TVs and set-top boxes. China has become a big country in tuner manufacture worldwide. Statistics shows that in 2008, China's tuner enterprises have manufactured 280 million tuners, and 320 million tuners will be manufactured in 2009, and digital tuners will occupy 30 percent to 40 percent. The localization rate of the digital tuners applied in ground digital TV and broadcasting will achieve over 80 percent.

The industry enters into information intelligentization

Not only digital TVs, but also such emerging application fields as digital movies and digital home theaters has become the main carriers of "the integration of three networks" and "the integration of three electronic appliances", "they have promoted industrial upgrade and generation alteration, created huge commercial and employment opportunities." Lin Yuanfang, Deputy Chairman of CVIA expressed, "the audio and video industry has entered the era when informatization, networking and visualization integrate each other, and the digital technologies, networking and mutual communication will lead the audio and video industry entering into information intelligentization."

Digital technologies liberate movies from films, which has driven the emerging of 3D movies. "Launching 3D movies is the third revolution in movie industry." Liang Xiangdong, Director-general of Development and Research, Shenzhen ACTO Digital Video Technology Co., Ltd, said, "when watching common 2D movies, onlooking also falls into the range of watching movies, but watching 3D movies will gives you a true experience."

3D movies are increasingly favored by audio and video manufacture industry due to the excellent special watching effect and the trait of intellectual property right. In the U.S., the number of 3D theaters has developed from around 220 in the end of 2006 to 4,000 in the end of 2009. Currently, China has also gained prominent achievements on the research of 3D projection technology and 3D TVs, and the industrialization and commercialization have been realized. Not only such color TV manufacturers as Hisense and TCL have developed sample 3D TVs, a certain industrial basis has been provided in terms of 3D image processing chips and 3D animation manufacture. Such higher education institutes as Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University and Nankai University have set on researching 3D stereo display, and Chongqing University has also established 3D display major. Up to now, there have been decades of enterprises working at 3D display technology research in China.

Music center is also transforming towards digitalization, and the audio equipment under family theater system, the core of which has upgraded from CD player to CD-video player, emerged. Traditional tape recorders and radio cassette recorder have almost disappeared; while multi-display devices like MP3, which is digitalized, portable and as a new storage medium, have developed rapidly. In recent years, the CD-video player industry has been developing circling new generation of large-capacity storage medium, so CD/VCD players are also facing elimination. The prosperity of large-screen flat panel TV market has driven the consumption of 5.1 surround digital family theatres.

The development of informatization and network technologies has provided strong and powerful technical guarantee for family digital network, and the condition on family network application has been mature. The integration of such three electronic appliances as computers, TVs and telephones is the main mode of modern family informatization. And the internet function is becoming one of the core applications of flat panel TVs. Presently, the retail sales volume of internet TVs occupies about 6.5 percent of the total TV sales volume. AVC, a market research institute, estimated that in 2010, the growth rate of internet TVs will exceed 50 percent, and the domestic sales volume of the TVs with internet function will reach 6 million sets with the market scale valued over RMB30 billion yuan. It is calculated that the total market scale of relevant devices brought by digital TVs will reach more than RMB1 trillion yuan, and the annually average market scale in the future ten years will approach RMB100 billion yuan. By 2010, the market scale of China's digital family products will reach RMB80 billion yuan, which will create huge commercial opportunities for those manufacturers involved in digital chip, intelligent home integration, software development and network devices.