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Mobile & Portable TV

  • 27-06-2007 10:32am
    #1
    watty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭


    There are currently about 6 competing standards worldwide for Mobile TV.

    RTE has been trialling DAB for Mobile TV which is poor quality for it.

    Vodaphone was using 3G to stream it. Very wasteful on bandwidth and not feasible if you are selling 3G/HSDPA Internet

    A USA company recently bought IPWireless purely for their mobile TV.

    Qualcomm have a UK trial of MediaFlo running


    DVB-H is good system and can be carried in a DVB-t (DTT) carriers. Gives best quality (enough to use it as a 2nd TV in study, bedroom, kitchen even 10" or more). Reflections on DVB-h improve signal and it has a good battery life.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/27/eu_endorses_dvb_h/

    It has been doing well in itally
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/28/dvbh_success_in_italy/

    (http://www.sportandtechnology.com/features/0487.html)
    Italy’s DVB-H services offered by Hutchison, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone are relatively successful. Screen Digest estimates that the Italian market was standing at 400,000 users in December 2006. Meanwhile, DMB-based services launched in Germany and the UK during the second half of 2006 have attracted no more than 10,000 users in each market at the same period. Each DMB service only offers a maximum of 5 TV channels because of the limited spectrum availability, while the Italian DVB-H services offer up to 17 channels.
    Subscription is the business model favoured in Italy and Germany, while in the UK the TV service is free to consumers signing a monthly contract of £25 or more. One of the drivers in operators launching these services is a desire to move the user base from pay as you go (also known as prepay) to contract, and it is no coincidence that it is the network operators with the highest number of prepay customers that have launched these services. Italy has the highest proportion of prepay customers in Europe. In Germany and the UK, the services have launched on the operators which have historically had a higher than market average proportion of prepay users.

    I've seen DVB-h trial and on 10" TV and Nokia Handset it was more like good quality MPEG4/DivX SD playback encoded from DVD than like portable TV. Clear pictures with no noticeable artefacts and moving / rotating handset had no effect.


Comments

  • #2
    Ulsterman 1690
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,242 ✭✭✭Ulsterman 1690


    Ive always thought is very short sighted of the engineers who drew up the original DVB-T spec not to make provision for portable reception

    Surely they could have designed DVB-T with a very highly robust "core" signal (say 192*240) for portable reception and an "augmentation" signal to take the resolution up to (576*720) or higher for regular SD and HD use

    One of the main reasons for promoting digital switchover is to save bandwidth but if channels are going to be duplicated on yet another platform it kinda defeats the object


  • #3
    watty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭watty


    That would have been a redesign of MPEG
    It was looked at as long ago as 1978, but there are problems with that scheme. MPEG2 was a huge improvement on MPEG1 if you have ever compared VCD and SVCD. At the time MPEG2 was the best available scheme for DVB.

    Also DVB-h uses a time slot system suited to lower datarate than full resolution TV, it can use MPEG4 and the receiver is only on for about 1/10th of the time.

    DVB-t / DTT with the correct transmission settings works well for train / car etc. But most use of portable TV is not actually mobile and a significant proportion at home!

    DVB-h Channels can be transmitted on an existing DTT multiplex with little loss of regular DTT bandwitdh or signal. Or transmitted on their own on as small as a 4Mhz bandwidth for 20 channels, if memory serves me.


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