Mobile TV Utterly Utterly Underwhelms the Brits

Sponge Bob

Story in the Guardian

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1991842,00.html

Its not that expensive, its just that peoples eyes have not eveolved in millions of years...probably

Virgin Mobile, part of the cable group NTL, launched the UK's first broadcast TV service for mobile phones in October with a £2.5m push fronted by the former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson. But despite recently cutting the price of the one handset that can receive the service, called the Lobster phone, it has not been a hit.

fronted is the word , jolly witty subeditor there . Despite the 'frontal' assault on the market

Virgin Mobile recently dropped the price of the handset - made by the far eastern manufacturer HTC - from £199.99 to just £99 for pre-pay customers.

and excruciatingly for the Virgin marketing monster .

Virgin Mobile has signed up "significantly" fewer than 10,000 customers

Tech Note

ts rival O2 carried out a trial of a service with 16 channels in Oxford and its users watched a weekly average of four hours of mobile TV.The O2 trial used a different technology to Virgin Mobile called DVB-H. While there is currently no spectrum in the UK that could be used to broadcast the signal, the five UK networks - 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone - are looking to form a consortium to bid for part of the airwaves to be freed up by the switch-off of the analogue TV signal. Known as channel 36, this slice of spectrum could run DVB-H and be available by 2008.

Nobody buying and a standards war brewing. Fabulous

Foggy43

Yesterday the UK goverment did not give the BBC the increase in licence fee they wanted.
As usual the BBC bosses were interviewed and Mobile TV projects look as though it will get they will end. I know it is early days yet. There will be loads of expert opinion. Personally I feel the London olympics maybe the best time to launch mobile tv. I have no interest in having it at the moment.

I did see on BBC News 24 before Christmas that the 'Oxford' trial did leave some questions. The majority of users watched mobile tv at home.

Maybe we have too much technology rolling out at the same time. Can we keep up with it. It all costs money.

Tom Dunne

As a gadget freak, I would be interested in watching stuff on my handset. Hell, I do that already.

But watching ITV, BBC and even RTE between 7:30am and 8:30am just doesn't do it for me - there's simply nothing on while I am commuting. Same going home in the evening. So the point I am making is that the networks should also be looking at specific program streaming. If I want to watch Desperate Housewives at 7:45am, I should be able to. And if there was a small charge for it, I would probably be willing to pay.

Then again, going on mobile data charges, the chances of the cost being anywhere remotely resembling reasonable are slim to none.

lawhec

It sounds like a great gimmick, but I wouldn't be bothered by TV on my mobile phone. Handheld TVs have been out for years yet never really caught the imagination - for me its only being pushed my mobile phone companies to get more money out of people, they're not in it for the good of their hearts.

Ulsterman 1690

I got a handheld tv onetime free with a mobile phone.

The only time I use it is when Im setting up an aerial

I cant see people paying a monthly sub to use such a thing.

If one wants to watch TV programmes on a train or wherever theres always one of those portable DVD thingys

watty

Most handheld TVs don't work due to poor signal and ghosting. The DAB version is poor quality and poor power consumption.

At least the DVB-h version works and is low power and even looks good on a 10" TV. Dvb-h is doing well in Itally.

The Price & Content has to be right or it fails. There is indeed little demand.

Tom Dunne

watty wrote:

The Price & Content has to be right or it fails. There is indeed little demand.

I think the networks need to try harder.

Looking around me on the train each morning, most people are listening to some form of device, be it a mobile or mp3 player. I am sure there is a market there for streaming video, whether it is Corination Street or Premiership highlights. Short, 30 min max videos are they key here, I think.

Pretty much everyone has a phone and would be due an upgrade at some stage, so I believe there is potential there. But, as I said in my previous post, you can be sure the networks will price themselves out of the market and consumers just won't bother.

david23

watty wrote:

Most handheld TVs don't work due to poor signal and ghosting. The DAB version is poor quality and poor power consumption.

At least the DVB-h version works and is low power and even looks good on a 10" TV. Dvb-h is doing well in Itally.

The Price & Content has to be right or it fails. There is indeed little demand.

Yes, the UK DAB-IP version only gives 5 channels with a bitrate of 64kbps each (much too low for video). Also, as you say, the signal is not very robust due to poor error correction.

DVB-H is a different proposition. The error correction and battery life are much better and it can offer up to 30 X 384kbps TV channels on a multiplex, so it's the true handheld version of DTT. DVB-H will be launching in the UK in 2008 and that's when mobile TV should start to take off.

JHMEG

Isn't RTE trialling DVB-H in a JV with British Telecom?

What I'd like to know is
a) who is paying for it (ie the taxpayer?), and
b) why are RTE trialling DVB-H when we don't even (officially) have DVB-T, DVB-S (RTE licence payers having to pay a British company to receive RTE on satellite.. wtf?)... or even DAB?

Maybe that's what you get when you leave things to civil servants.

watty

DVB-h can actually be transmitted on same MUX as DVB-T. Heirachical Modulation.


It does make some sense.

triple-play

RTE did a 5 handset technical trial of DAB IP (not DVB-H) last year with BT Ireland. RTE has DAB spectrum for digital radio so they were probably wondering what else they could do with it. DAP IP TV is a poor version of DVB-H as mentioned elsewhere. O2 are trialing DVB-H in Dublin.