Consumers are warned that advertisements selling decoders and other equipment claiming to meet digital terrestrial television technical standard, and to receive such services, are untrue and misleading.

The Office of the Telecommunications Authority said today the technical standard has yet to be decided, so there are no external decoders currently available to receive such services.

The two free-to-air TV companies, ATV and TVB, will start providing DTT services next year. When DTT services are launched, the stations will broadcast their existing programme channels in both analogue and digital formats. They will also offer new digital services such has high-definition TV.

Viewers can use their current analogue TV sets to receive analogue TV services until the shutdown of the analogue broadcasting. Subject to further market and technical studies, the Government aims to switch off analogue broadcasting in 2012.

As existing TV sets are incapable of decoding digital signals, viewers who want to receive DTT services will need to purchase either a digital decoder to be connected to their existing TV sets or an integrated digital TV with a built-in digital decoder.

More information on DTT and receiving equipment is available at www.citb.gov.hk/ctb and www.ofta.gov.hk.