Mobile TV: tomorrow's iPod?

For several years now, Mobile TV has been touted as "the next killer app for mobile". Cellular carriers, handset manufacturers and media companies alike argued that bringing this functionality to cell phones makes total sense. Weak consumer interest was explained as a temporary phenomenon caused by imperfect technology and high prices. "Just wait a little bit longer...", they claimed. For example, Nokia projects that "DVB-H will be accessible by an audience of approximately 300 million mobile users by 2006".

Well, we've been waiting for a while and this revolution still hasn't been televised. Let's look at where Mobile TV is at this point and what is it that stops us all from watching the latest episode of "Lost" while riding the bus home.

First and foremost, no single standard exists for these broadcasts. Different techniques of video encoding combine with different delivery methods (3G, terrestrial, satellite) to create a range of solutions - DVB-H, DMB and TDtv being the most prominent. Due to complexity of hardware implementing each of these, most phones end up supporting just one and thus only work in several countries at best. Consumer confusion grows further thanks to several carriers marketing on-demand downloads of videoclips as "Mobile TV".

I first saw a DMB phone when I attended CeBit'06 in Hannover, Germany. It was the B250 model with a rotatable screen. The handset was quite chunky and refused to show any TV on its gorgeous display, proclaiming "Unable to lock on the satellite signal" instead. In any case, the viewing area didn't seem that big at all... For the first time, I pondered whether having access to TV on the go made up for this inferiority of picture and sound.




Samsung's competition did not waste any time. A DVB-H phone from LG, the U900, was released in Italy just in time for the Soccer World Cup. Same idea as the B250, but in a slider rather than a clam-shell.

TDtv is the latest standard, currently undergoing trials in England. Here, cellular carriers found themselves with a lot of spare bandwidth that was meant to be used for mobile internet. However, as that turned out to be very expensive for consumers, the bandwidth just sits there unused. TDtv takes advantage of that fact, adding some nice features such as multicasting (sending the same data stream to multiple handsets simultaneously, reducing network congestion). One can only hope England doesn't run into the same problems Korea encountered years ago with eventual lack of bandwidth - that was the real cause for introducing satellite-based Mobile TV standards.

All in all, the evolution of Mobile TV is underway. Many issues, such as cost, battery life, available channels and so forth have to be addressed. To many, Mobile TV has the potential to become "the next iPod". However, the way in which audio and video media are consumed varies drastically. The billion dollar question is - is the audience going to pick accessibility and convenience over the comfort of their home theaters?