Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Hisense (600060.SH) has announced it will unveil its USD 99 Hisense Plus Google TV set-top box (STB) during the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) in Berlin (August 31 - September 5).

Google executives have said the new Hisense Google TV offering has been designed to intuitively search and sort through millions of channels and shows across live television, content services, home networks, apps, and the web.

The China Africa Development Fund and China Development Bank have promised to invest heavily into the digitalization of TV in African countries.

Since 2007, $100 million has been provided to the project by the China Africa Development Fund and another $50 million is coming, according to Chi Jianxin, president of the fund, speaking at the African Digital TV Development Ministerial Seminar on Sunday.

THE first thing that retired local housewife Xiao Anli does every morning is turn on her television.

That's how she finds out which grocery store has the lowest price, how long she would need to wait at nearby hospitals and what the traffic and parking conditions are like around her home.

TV and new media traditionally compete for audience, but they also cooperate in many programs, reinforcing each other and creating a fresh, more interactive experience. It can be win-win, Xu Wei reports.

Television and new media are cooperating as never before, many programs use TV, websites and mobile devices and the boundaries between television and new media are breaking down.

OVER half of Chinese smartphone owners would sooner give up TV than their mobile device, which represents a huge growth opportunity in the world's biggest phone market, according to a Google survey released yesterday.

In the survey, 54 percent of consumers preferred mobile devices than watching TV, said Google which developed Android, the world's most popular smartphone system.

China successfully sent a French-made communication satellite, "APSTAR-7," into orbit Saturday evening, using a Long March-3B carrier rocket launched from the southwestern Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

Monitoring data indicated that the satellite separated from the rocket and reached its designated orbit 26 minutes after its launch at 6:27 pm Beijing time.

DIRECT-BROADCAST, a satellite TV service, will replace wireless signals for about 200 million rural families in China by 2015.

A pilot project has gone smoothly in Ningxia, Hebei and Inner Mongolia, in the north and northwest of China, since April, according to Zhang Haitao, deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

Traditionally, sales of high-end products do not occur at home, but that's coming to an end if some entrepreneurs have their way.

Many television shopping programs have sprung up in recent years, and rather than selling cheap goods, they are moving upmarket to sell gold, cars, even houses.

Media bosses see potential for expansion despite competition

The Beijing-based media company aims to raise $200 million in IPO

Phoenix New Media Ltd, the Beijing-based Internet, TV and mobile-news provider, is seeking to raise $200 million in a US initial public offering (IPO).

The Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group said on Thursday that it will launch its own television product in the "near future", as part of its recent efforts to expand outside the PC industry.

Yang Yuanqing, chief executive officer of Lenovo, said at a news conference that the company is working on an Internet-connected television platform that could be linked with its smartphones and tablet computers.

Fifteen-minute specials every day on a prime time TV show for two consecutive weeks featuring a galaxy of Chinese A-list celebrities and fashion bloggers as guest hosts. It's the auspicious publicity every fashion house craves, and for Chanel, one of the world's most recognized fashion houses, it was a dream come true.

Centered around its biggest ever exhibition in China, Culture Chanel, the program, sharing the same name as the exhibition, was aired at 10:30 pm every night from Jan 14 for a fortnight. It was shown on Channel Young, a Shanghai-based TV station that focuses purely on fashion and urban lifestyles, the only one of its kind in China.

Not only has it been a boost for Chanel but it is also a marketing bonanza for the TV station, with ratings climbing to an historical high of more than four points.

SHANGHAI plans to make home broadband 10 times faster and establish a citywide mobile broadband network, with more 3G base stations and a next-generation broadcasting network by 2012, local officials said yesterday.

The city, one of the pilot regions chosen to test Three Network Convergence - the convergence of Internet, TV and mobile networks - will be expected to take a leading role in implementing national policy in sectors such as infrastructure construction, business scale and service level.

Shanghai is to encourage cooperation between local TV broadcasting and telecommunications firms, such as joint ventures between the sectors.

Meanwhile, there will be more cross-platform services such as Internet Protocol TV IPTV, mobile TV and online broadcasting organizations on one unified network.

This means that Chinese TV, Internet and mobile phone users might soon be able to use a single gadget for all the things that now require separate pieces of hardware and accounts.

CHINA Central Television auctioned off its 2011 advertising spots last night for a record 12.67 billion yuan (US$1.9 billion), up 15 percent from a year ago.

Industry confidence among advertisers pushed up the average price for CCTV ad space, said He Haiming, deputy head of CCTV's ad division, without revealing specific figures.

Shenzhen-listed Wuliangye Yibin Co, a major domestic distiller, outbid Shanghai-listed rival Kweichow Moutai Co as a nine-month sponsor of the clock that appears just prior to the 7pm CCTV newscast. It paid 405 million yuan - the highest price paid for an ad space at the auction - as the nightly newscast is one of the country's most watched programs.

Domestic distillers spent 1.9 billion yuan on ad purchases this year. Chinese Jing Wine, Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao ranked in the top three in almost every round of bidding.

The companies spent a combined 1.16 billion yuan on ad space.

"Distillers usually attach great importance to building their brands, and they will continue to flex their muscles in the future," He said.