Technical standards in colonial Hong Kong
Encyclopedia
British colonial rule
affected the technical standards in Hong Kong
. However, not all technical standards in Hong Kong are identical with their counterparts in the United Kingdom
due to practical or some other reasons.
s and adaptors were seldom found in the market. Electrical appliances were fitted with 2-pin plugs and quasi-UK three pin plugs (which meant they were compatible with BS 1363
or BS 546
sockets, but the plug itself did not comply with the British Standard).
After the enforcement of the regulation, many British standard electrical products are common in Hong Kong market. Some adaptors common in the United Kingdom are not available in Hong Kong. Conversely, local manufacturers develop adaptors for the Hong Kong market and they are not often sold in the UK.
Some local manufacturers print the Union Flag
on the plug
s and extension cables, but these products are not manufactured or sold in the United Kingdom. This practice has not ceased even though Hong Kong was transferred back to the People's Republic of China
in 1997.
Based on the adapted version of IEE Wiring Regulations
, the colonial Hong Kong Government published Code of Practice for the Electricity (Wiring) Regulation in the 1990s. This book has been revised several times and the latest version was published in 2009. A copy of the regulations can be downloaded here.
In Government buildings, public housing estates and Government-sponsored educational institutions, British electrical products (brands include Tenby, MK electric
, Federal Electric, MEM, Crabtree, Legrand
etc.) are often used. However, these British electrical products are not very popular in the private sector. Some people consider that British sockets are not very good-looking so they prefer other brands. Australia
-based Clipsal
(produced by Gold Peak
in China) http://www.iec.ch/online_news/etech/arch_2003/etech_0703/interv.htm is the most popular brand in private buildings, and some Government buildings built after the handover
of Hong Kong to PRC
in 1997.
of Hong Kong, all the domestic telephone sockets installed were BS 6312 British telephone sockets
but there was no stipulation on commercial telephone sockets. Both Registered Jack
(RJ) and BS 6312 systems were (and are) found in commercial telephone installations.
After the handover, the Hong Kong Government started gradually replacing the BS 6312 sockets with American RJ ones. Service providers install RJ sockets, instead of BS 6312 ones, for clients in new installation, relocation or maintenance projects. Existing BS 6312 sockets before the handover are still in use and there is no compulsory replacement programme.
, United States and Chinese (Traditional) keyboards were utilized by both the colonial Hong Kong Government and the public. United Kingdom layout keyboards are rare in computer malls in Sham Shui Po and Mong Kok
. However, Japanese keyboards can occasionally be found.
sold in Hong Kong is "English (United States)". Many users in Hong Kong complain that their spell checker software highlights locally-correct spelling like 'colour' since they did not change the default regional settings in their operating system
s and software applications. Most users, however, just leave the default regional setting (English (United States)) unchanged.
Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows
are far more popular than the English-language version among Chinese-speaking computer users in Hong Kong.
Moreover, since many people use Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows
and Microsoft Office
to produce their webpages and emails, many English-language websites and emails In Hong Kong have the encoding "Chinese (Traditional)" (Big5
) rather than "Western European" (ISO-8859-1). Unicode
webpages are also not very common. Setting the browser
to the encoding of "Western European" to view these Big5 Hong Kong webpages may cause some characters (for example, ',", £, € etc.) to be displayed incorrectly.
.
Stereo audio is under NICAM
system, which is the same as British standard.
, Digital television in Hong Kong.
Under PRC rule, Hong Kong has confirmed to use the system developed by PR China in 2006, which is different from the current system used in Europe (including the UK) or America. It shows that Hong Kong no longer adheres to technical standards in the UK and EU after the handover.
s are region 2, of PAL
standard. However, even though Hong Kong is under control of the People's Republic of China
, DVDs found here are not Region 6 (for users in the Mainland China
). Officially, the DVDs in Hong Kong are region 3 in NTSC colour coding. DVDs of region 1 (US, NTSC format) or region 2 (Europe, PAL format) can be also found in local shops like HMV
), which is not an issue for the local market as DVD players commonly sold in the shops are multi-region.
Just as other Asian countries, VCD
s are common for rental and sale in Hong Kong but these discs are not popular in the UK.
.
is commonly used in colonial and post-handover Hong Kong equipments. These ports are commonly found there on consumer TVs, DVD players, VCRs and game consoles sold there. Although the UK uses the higher-quality RGB signal transmission scheme provided by European Standard SCART
, SCART ports are seldom found in Hong Kong equipment.
For RF signals, the Belling-Lee connector or IEC 169-2 connector are very commonly used in equipments sold in Hong Kong. However, same as Europe, the 75-ohm F connector
is used by Cable TV Hong Kong
instead of Belling-Lee ones.
Colonial Hong Kong
In the 19th century the British, Dutch, French, Indians and Americans saw Imperial China as the world's largest untapped market. In 1840 the British Empire launched their first and one of the most aggressive expeditionary forces to claim the territory that would later be known as Hong Kong.In a few...
affected the technical standards in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
. However, not all technical standards in Hong Kong are identical with their counterparts in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
due to practical or some other reasons.
Electrical plugs and adaptors
Before the legislation of the Electrical Products Regulation (a few years prior to the handover in 1997), British standard extension cables, plugPlug
Plug may refer to:* Plug for the plughole in the bathtub, washbasin and sink* Plug , a short lived British comic that ran from 1977 until 1979, when it merged with The Beezer, which featured a character from The Bash Street Kids called Plug as it's main star.* Plug , a family of fishing lures*...
s and adaptors were seldom found in the market. Electrical appliances were fitted with 2-pin plugs and quasi-UK three pin plugs (which meant they were compatible with BS 1363
BS 1363
BS 1363 is a British Standard which specifies the most common type of single-phase AC power plugs and sockets that are used in the United Kingdom. Distinctive characteristics of the system are shutters on the line and neutral socket holes, and a fuse in the plug...
or BS 546
BS 546
BS 546 is a pre-Second World War British Standard for domestic AC power plugs and sockets that is also the precursor of current Indian and South African plug standards. This plug is also used in Singapore to a limited extent...
sockets, but the plug itself did not comply with the British Standard).
After the enforcement of the regulation, many British standard electrical products are common in Hong Kong market. Some adaptors common in the United Kingdom are not available in Hong Kong. Conversely, local manufacturers develop adaptors for the Hong Kong market and they are not often sold in the UK.
Some local manufacturers print the Union Flag
Union Flag
The Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack, is the flag of the United Kingdom. It retains an official or semi-official status in some Commonwealth Realms; for example, it is known as the Royal Union Flag in Canada. It is also used as an official flag in some of the smaller British overseas...
on the plug
Plug
Plug may refer to:* Plug for the plughole in the bathtub, washbasin and sink* Plug , a short lived British comic that ran from 1977 until 1979, when it merged with The Beezer, which featured a character from The Bash Street Kids called Plug as it's main star.* Plug , a family of fishing lures*...
s and extension cables, but these products are not manufactured or sold in the United Kingdom. This practice has not ceased even though Hong Kong was transferred back to the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
in 1997.
Electric sockets (wiring system)
Electrical wiring (UK)
There are a number of specific national practices, habits and traditions associated with consumer mains wiring in the United Kingdom that differ significantly from other countries...
, the colonial Hong Kong Government published Code of Practice for the Electricity (Wiring) Regulation in the 1990s. This book has been revised several times and the latest version was published in 2009. A copy of the regulations can be downloaded here.
In Government buildings, public housing estates and Government-sponsored educational institutions, British electrical products (brands include Tenby, MK electric
MK electric
MK Electric is a company that makes electrical accessories. The company's headquarters are in Basildon, Essex, England, from where it makes and sells goods worldwide.-History:...
, Federal Electric, MEM, Crabtree, Legrand
Legrand
Legrand may refer to:*Legrand * LeGrand * Legrand , a French producer of hardware for electrical installations* Legrand, California, former name of Le Grand, California...
etc.) are often used. However, these British electrical products are not very popular in the private sector. Some people consider that British sockets are not very good-looking so they prefer other brands. Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
-based Clipsal
Clipsal
Clipsal is an Australian brand of electrical accessories. The main factory was located at Bowden, but it was announced in 2008 that a move would be made to a new site, located at Gepps Cross. The move took place in 2009. Clipsal also boasts smaller factories in Nuriootpa, Strathalbyn and Wingfield...
(produced by Gold Peak
Gold Peak
-Over View:Gold Peak Industries Limited is an Asian battery manufacturer established in 1964 and based in Hong Kong. They are also involved in the domestic appliance cabling business via purchasing 16% of the stock value Chengdu based Ling Xu Cabling Corp in 2001.-Gold Peak Industries Limited...
in China) http://www.iec.ch/online_news/etech/arch_2003/etech_0703/interv.htm is the most popular brand in private buildings, and some Government buildings built after the handover
Handover
In cellular telecommunications, the term handover or handoff refers to the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another...
of Hong Kong to PRC
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
in 1997.
Telephone sockets
Before the handoverTransfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong
The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China, referred to as ‘the Return’ or ‘the Reunification’ by the Chinese and ‘the Handover’ by others, took place on 1 July 1997...
of Hong Kong, all the domestic telephone sockets installed were BS 6312 British telephone sockets
British telephone sockets
British telephone sockets were introduced in their current plug and socket form on 19 November 1981 by British Telecom to allow subscribers to connect their own telephones...
but there was no stipulation on commercial telephone sockets. Both Registered Jack
Registered jack
A registered jack is a standardized physical network interface — both jack construction and wiring pattern — for connecting telecommunications or data equipment to a service provided by a local exchange carrier or long distance carrier. The standard designs for these connectors and their wiring...
(RJ) and BS 6312 systems were (and are) found in commercial telephone installations.
After the handover, the Hong Kong Government started gradually replacing the BS 6312 sockets with American RJ ones. Service providers install RJ sockets, instead of BS 6312 ones, for clients in new installation, relocation or maintenance projects. Existing BS 6312 sockets before the handover are still in use and there is no compulsory replacement programme.
Keyboard layouts
In the Crown colonyCrown colony
A Crown colony, also known in the 17th century as royal colony, was a type of colonial administration of the English and later British Empire....
, United States and Chinese (Traditional) keyboards were utilized by both the colonial Hong Kong Government and the public. United Kingdom layout keyboards are rare in computer malls in Sham Shui Po and Mong Kok
Mong Kok
Mong Kok , less often known as Argyle , is an area in the Yau Tsim Mong District on Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong...
. However, Japanese keyboards can occasionally be found.
Regional settings in Microsoft products
The default regional setting of Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
sold in Hong Kong is "English (United States)". Many users in Hong Kong complain that their spell checker software highlights locally-correct spelling like 'colour' since they did not change the default regional settings in their operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s and software applications. Most users, however, just leave the default regional setting (English (United States)) unchanged.
Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
are far more popular than the English-language version among Chinese-speaking computer users in Hong Kong.
Moreover, since many people use Chinese versions of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
to produce their webpages and emails, many English-language websites and emails In Hong Kong have the encoding "Chinese (Traditional)" (Big5
Big5
Big-5 or Big5 is a character encoding method used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau for Traditional Chinese characters.Mainland China, which uses Simplified Chinese Characters, uses the GB instead.- Organization :...
) rather than "Western European" (ISO-8859-1). Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
webpages are also not very common. Setting the browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
to the encoding of "Western European" to view these Big5 Hong Kong webpages may cause some characters (for example, ',", £, € etc.) to be displayed incorrectly.
Analog
Hong Kong uses the UK PAL-I broadcast system. See the article PALPAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
.
Stereo audio is under NICAM
NICAM
Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex is an early form of lossy compression for digital audio. It was originally developed in the early 1970s for point-to-point links within broadcasting networks...
system, which is the same as British standard.
Digital
See the articles DMB-T/HDMB-T/H
DTMB is the TV standard for mobile and fixed terminals used in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although at first this standard was called DMB-T/H , the official name is DTMB.DTT broadcasting systems...
, Digital television in Hong Kong.
Under PRC rule, Hong Kong has confirmed to use the system developed by PR China in 2006, which is different from the current system used in Europe (including the UK) or America. It shows that Hong Kong no longer adheres to technical standards in the UK and EU after the handover.
DVD and VCD
In the UK DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s are region 2, of PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
standard. However, even though Hong Kong is under control of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, DVDs found here are not Region 6 (for users in the Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
). Officially, the DVDs in Hong Kong are region 3 in NTSC colour coding. DVDs of region 1 (US, NTSC format) or region 2 (Europe, PAL format) can be also found in local shops like HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
), which is not an issue for the local market as DVD players commonly sold in the shops are multi-region.
Just as other Asian countries, VCD
VCD
VCD is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below:* VCD Athletic, semi-professional football team* Video CD* Voice command device* Value change dump * Vocal cord dysfunction* Visual Communication and Design...
s are common for rental and sale in Hong Kong but these discs are not popular in the UK.
Telecommunications
Hong Kong uses the GSM 900 & 1800 standards and some operators offer 3G services (3g 2100). See also article on the Telecommunications industry in Hong KongTelecommunications industry in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has one of the most sophisticated and competitive telecommunications markets in the world. As a result, Hong Kong residents get good services in terms of capacity, speed and price. The Office of Telecommunications Authority is the legislative body responsible for regulating the...
.
Analog Video
Similar with the US, Japan and Australia, S-VideoS-Video
Separate Video, more commonly known as S-Video and Y/C, is often referred to by JVC as both an S-VHS connector and as Super Video. It is an analog video transmission scheme, in which video information is encoded on two channels: luma and chroma...
is commonly used in colonial and post-handover Hong Kong equipments. These ports are commonly found there on consumer TVs, DVD players, VCRs and game consoles sold there. Although the UK uses the higher-quality RGB signal transmission scheme provided by European Standard SCART
SCART
SCART is a French-originated standard and associated 21-pin connector for connecting audio-visual equipment together...
, SCART ports are seldom found in Hong Kong equipment.
For RF signals, the Belling-Lee connector or IEC 169-2 connector are very commonly used in equipments sold in Hong Kong. However, same as Europe, the 75-ohm F connector
F connector
The F connector is a type of coaxial RF connector commonly used for "over the air" terrestrial television, cable television and universally for satellite television and cable modems, usually with RG-6/U cable or, in older installations, with RG-59/U cable. It was invented by Eric E...
is used by Cable TV Hong Kong
Cable TV Hong Kong
Cable TV Hong Kong , previously known as Wharf Cable before October 1998, is owned and operated by i-CABLE Communications Limited...
instead of Belling-Lee ones.