mobile tv

It is been just about almost year since I inked the last ideas for the Pocketcine project and framed it around the idea of mobile viral videos, then pitched it to the committee considering Mobile Muse projects. At the time there was huge hype around video for the mobile phone. My project treated the mobile phone and its video capability as a new medium that Canadian artists should explore and exploit.

I am sorry about the hype because it made people think I was making movies for the phone. Thankfully the hype has died down considerably. The pundits who never believed in the arrival of the new medium point to the tiny screen and say "who would want to watch a movie on that?"

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.