The headline is from Variety. exTV is the name of the new Pay-TV venture from Galaxy Satellite Broadcasting, owned by TVB and Intelsat (the government insisted that TVB couldn’t control the venture and had to have a partner, and I think the original partner pulled out). This is from the Hong Kong Standard:
The service will carry 30 channels at its debut, of which five will be from shareholder TVB. The five will include the 24-hour news channel TVBN, drama channel TVBE and children and family channel TVBQ in addition to two TVB Mandarin language drama and entertainment channels, TVB8 and TVB Xing He.
Apart from the five TVB channels, exTV will also carry BBC World, CNBC Hong Kong, Hallmark Channel, HBO, E! Entertainment Television, Eurosportnews, Cinemax, Nickelodeon Asia, Blue House and Turner Classic Movies.
Very imaginative channel names from TVB, I thought. Most of the non-TVB channels are already available in Hong Kong, always assuming that the service is available in your building. I know people who can’t get Cable TV at all, and we still only have their analogue service. No sign of Now Broadband TV here either, in spite of the letter they had published in the SCMP Technology section claiming virtually all residential buildings now have the service. Perhaps the New Territories doesn’t count? There are other players (YesTV etc.) but I am not sure they can be taken seriously.
However, more competition has to be a good thing, and, assuming that the exclusive deal between CableTV and ESPN/Star is re-negotiated, it should be possible to get any of the channels you want from multiple providers, which must mean it will be cheaper.
What I really want is something like the SkyPlus box (currently available in the UK), which allows you to record programs from any of the satellite channels on to a hard disk and watch them whenever you want.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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