Cable television in the United Kingdom

The distribution of cable television around the world:

Cable television is the most common transmission method in all urban areas of mainland China – television aerials are an extremely rare sight. Cable systems in China usually carry all the CCTV channels in Mandarin, along with all the channels of municipal, provincial or regional networks in question (some examples of such stations are listed below). The remaining slots carry the main channels from several other province-level stations, and may carry additional channels from metropolitan stations such as BTV and Shanghai Media Group. They may also carry a local channel for a particular sub-provincial municipality, prefecture or county. Individual compounds (hotels, housing estates, etc.) often add a request channel showing karaoke music videos and animations. An extremely small number of compounds with many foreign residents and/or tourists (for example, five star hotels in Beijing) will also carry selected channels from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the West. Phoenix Television has the widest carriage under this rule.

Mainland China had more than 44.5 million digital cable television users in 2008.

Unlike many cable television operators in other countries that support two-way modes, China's cable television systems operate in a one-way mode (download only, no upload).

Cable television was introduced to Hong Kong in 1957 when Rediffusion Television (predecessor to Asia Television) began transmissions as Hong Kong's first television station. This arrangement ended in 1973 when Rediffusion Television was granted a free-to-air terrestrial broadcast licence by the Hong Kong government. Cable television returned to Hong Kong in 1993 when Wharf Cable Television (now known as Cable TV Hong Kong) began operations as Hong Kong's first subscription-based multichannel television platform. Cable TV Hong Kong currently competes with the IPTV platforms HKBN bbTV and now TV as well as the pay television service TVB Network Vision.

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