Slow progress in broadcast Mobile TV

By Jonas Kollberg (Intel) (6 posts) on November 19, 2007 at 3:37 am

A year ago it was a lot of fuzz around brodcast mobile TV, now its very quiet here in EMEA. Are we just going through the standard Gartner Hype curve and have reached the Trough of Disillusionment and is about to launch for real?

Or is broadcast mobile TV something that cant stand on its feet economically? There are so many alternatives such as sync and go, stream from home, stream over 3G (networks already in place even though more bandwidth is required) so that if nothing will happen soon, I think the room for broadcast TV in the Mobile space will become smaller and smaller. Youtube has launched a site for mobile consumption of their content and this is only a first sign that the big players are really moving into the mobile space actively.

If nothing big is happening before or during the Olympics, I will start to re-evaluate my personal view broadcast Mobile TV, but until then I will be a beliver...

No matter where we end up it is great time for Mobile users. A lot of things are happening!

Anyone has other opinions? 

Personally I think Nokia will make brodcast Mobile TV happend. They dont have as much business as Ericsson on the 3G Network side, so they have an interest both on the client and network side for broadcast mobile TV. And Nokia is huge on clients.

The only risk here is that Nokia focuses so much on the mobile-phone as a client so that all other potential clients will be forgotten, which would be very bad. I was glad to see that other realizes this danger as well. The German DVB-H service provider cartel got some rules put upon them, stating that if they got to build the network, the services should be usable on other clients than Mobile phones. Great news! I hope this will turn up the interest for OMA DRM profile protection wise.

Certainly some people have a VERY positive view stating there will be 2 billion users 2013. A bit on the high side, isnt it? :-) 

In US, more progress is made than in EMEA and this is unusual on the mobility side. I hope we can get moving and produce some real compelling services soon. 

Cheers

/Jonas

Categories: Mobility

Comments (8)

November 19, 2007 2:08 PM PST

Michael Shadle (Intel)
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Green Belt
 Verizon has VCAST, and to me it's absoultely useless.

First, why would I want to bother watching anything 20+ fps on such a small screen?

Second, the network supposedly can support it, but I would think it has to buffer all the time, not to mention signal strength and location play a part.

I'd rather just have the data networks beefed up continuously. I'm excited to see what happens with the 700MHz band. If the data network is strong enough, then worry about services using it. Don't invent some service when the networks are still slow or immature.
November 20, 2007 12:51 AM PST

Jonas Kollberg (Intel)
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Registered User
 I agree with you regarding letting the network come first and services later.

However TV services is already here (quite popular) and people use it (unicast over 3G). But the quality is to low and its expensive to produce the service over 3G. Also for events such as the Olympics I am worried that non broadcast network can not handle this, even with MBMS. So broadcast networks is a requirement, if the services take off. If everybody has your view on it, that video is not important or that low quality is ok, then we dont need broadcast networks.

And regarding quality, I think people is often willing to pay for quality. I would personally pay for a highquality Youtube for example. There are so many good music videos there, and the quality is soooo bad...

700 Mhz band is interesting I agree, very much so!
November 20, 2007 3:04 AM PST

Michael Shadle (Intel)
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373
Status Points:
323
Green Belt
 Europe and Asia usually seem to be ahead of the US with wireless technologies (among other things) - from what I can tell, and I am speaking purely from my own experience and opinion is that wireless-based services are not widely used or enjoyed yet in the US - especially higher bandwidth services like TV. I don't know anyone who watches videos on their phones (besides iPhones, but it's not network-delivered video) much less shop or use it as an e-wallet (I've never seen any e-wallet enabled devices) - it's basically limited to SMS, MMS, and some GPS now. I think everything else is not very popular with the masses, and I blame the network for that. (I speak for the US only! Everyone else is lucky to be living abroad...)
November 28, 2007 11:06 AM PST

Jason Zhu (Intel)
 Here is another interesting usage that being created by ISV in China.
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/videos/home.aspx?fn=100043
UMPC and future MID users can watch the TV programs thru DTV broadcasting network, which offer better and stable quality of video/audio than streaming video thru telecom network and analog TV. More than it, users can also access the relevant information about TV programs, and even participate in the program with interative functions eg. vote, poll.
Hope it will be deployed for Olympic Game 2008 in China.
November 29, 2007 5:34 AM PST

Jonas Kollberg (Intel)
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 Yes, this is a typical Broadcast TV use case. Then it dosnt matter if its DVB-H, TDMB, MediaFlo or any other Broadcasting TV network.

I just hope they will improve the UI 100 times before they go to market. It has to be fingerdriven. Stylus is unaccpetable if MID shall go mainstream.
November 29, 2007 8:40 AM PST

Jason Zhu (Intel)
 Jonas,

Agree, UI is important. I like the UI of iPhone, which allows finger control instead of Stylus.

and among DVB-H, T-DMB, MediaFlo and new china homegrown standards, the mechanisms for interactive application over TV content are different. I believe the interactive usage on computer device is one of differentiation comparing with traditional TV.

NTT Docomo recently announced a couple of phones to support One Seg Digital TV, that I am not sure what standard it is, ISDB-T? here is the list
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/#1seg
November 29, 2007 9:20 AM PST

Jonas Kollberg (Intel)
Total Points:
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Registered User
 Its ISDB-T yes, (There are 13 segments in each channel. Mobile TV takes 1 segment and HDTV takes 12... Thereby the name)

I do agree interactivity will be key on TV computer, just look at Joost.
On Mobile TV I dont belive in interactivity at all because of screensize on mobile phones.... Maybe when (if?) MIDs become mainstream interactivity will play an important role?
December 10, 2007 3:56 AM PST


Amitabh Kumar		 I believe that the China Olympics in 2008 will also be a test of a host of technologies apart from opening some windows in the proprietary world of Chinese standards.

Will 3G networks outside of china be able to support thousands ( or hundreds of thousands of views)? Will there be significant use of multicasts?

Will WiMAX TV be a success in China ( No 3G yet).

It will be interesting to map all the traffic flows and see what the next generation of internet needs to provide.

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