This Day, That Year

Item from Jan 25, 1994, in China Daily: A worker handles Jinxing brand TV sets at a large-screen color television production line in the Shanghai No 1 Television Factory. …

China has become a leading producer of smart TVs that integrate interactive Web 2.0 features.

Last year, nearly 51 million televisions were sold in China, 80 percent of them smart TVs, according to All View Cloud, a consulting company specializing in the industry.

In comparison, the penetration of smart TVs in the United States and Europe is about 50 percent.

The report also said TVs with screens 55 inches (1.39 meters) and bigger accounted for 32 percent of all televisions sold in China last year, up by 10.4 percent from the previous year.

Another report by Hisense, one of the major smart-TV producers, said that the average viewing time of a smart-TV user is close to five hours per day.

Meanwhile, video on demand has become popular, accounting for 68 percent of all content viewed.

Instead of sticking to the program schedules of TV stations, viewers are now able to watch the programs of their choice whenever they want.

With the changing viewing habits of TV audiences, soap operas broadcast on the internet have become increasingly popular over the past few years.

Last year, more than 700 internet soaps were released.