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Samsung Puts Satellite TV in Cell Phones
prostoalex writes "Japanese subscribers will be able to get 70 television channels with a new cell phone, currently developed and tested by Samsung. Using an ARM microprocessor, Samsung makes it possible to receive satellite TV transmissions in 2.6 GHz range. No dish is required, however, for clarity of the signal the company is currently installing a network of repeaters. This could substantially increase the number of satellite TV subscribers, which in the United States is still a distant second to cable television."
Wow! Now I can talk on my phone -and- watch tv while I drive! ...
./weed | bong
70 channels seems kindof low. shouldnt they be able to get more than cable tv?
Now instead of getting run over by somebody yakking on their cell phone, pedestrians can now get run over by people watching TV on their cell phones...
Humor aside, it's kind of weird to see people take more and more steps into a kind of nomadic existence - cellphones displacing landlines, PDAs and notebooks displacing desktops, huge-ass SUVs replacing small studio apartments...
Does this have any relation to satellite phone?
Sure you can get service when your in the middle of nowhere...but inside a building, you can't get service because of a roof over you.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
If this ever makes it to the UK, due to the TV Licensing Nazis - if, say, every member of a household had one of these phones and used them while out of the house, a seperate TV license costing around $160 a year would be needed for each phone.
I doubt it will be an ARM microprocessor. The article only mentions an ARM core, so it will probably be a Samsung mpu with an ARM core. In the last few years, Samsung came out with some impressive ARM-based microprocessors.
- Cell phones "add-on" sizes get standardized,
- You can buy a cell phone model with n = 0,1,2,3 feature slots,
- You choose your n features: color screen, GPS, Satellite TV, 802.11, Super Mario Bros, won't-go-unnoticed-vibrations, fax, printer, serial port, folded parachute...
What changes would be needed to get it working in the US, and popular? Would a different band need to be used for satelite transmissions? This would be neat if the kinks are worked out to make it global.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
i mean that is really bad. it is already annoying having cell phones packed with not wanted, disturbing, useless functions and features when almost nothing useful like calendars, proper os which can run downloaded or even selfwritten scripts/programs and so on is implemented.
yet an other useful tool made by modern technology turned into bussiness driven marchandise crap...
Aure entuluva!
** A TV set powered by its own internal batteries - a pocket sized TV for example - may be covered by a licence at your home address.
In Japan, Vodafone sells a NEC phone that has a built-in TV tuner. Go to Vodafone's Japanese site (English link) to check it out (and their other awesome models).
The advertisements for this phone show two businessmen standing on the train platform. One of them is using an older DoCoMo style phone, and is standing alone on the right side of the picture. On the left side of the picture stands a younger businessman with one of the NEC TV phones: he is surrounded by lots of people peering over his shoulder at the phone. He has a huge grin on his face. The older man on the right side of the picture is looking sad and alone as he holds his phone out in front of him and looks enviously over at the younger man.
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
So now I can get TV on my phone, along with a PDA, a game console, and a camera, etc...... But they still can't make a simple phone that just calls people and has a phone book. Super.
Oh my, I think Dave just turned into a bear.
The small pocket TVs that you can get from the likes of Casio are much larger than a mobile phone and can take larger cells.
aken straight from TV licensing web site:
** A TV set powered by its own internal batteries - a pocket sized TV for example - may be covered by a licence at your home address.
That is correct. Notice the use of the word "may". The "may" would apply IF no other TV was being used in your house while you were using the portable. This is why it is ok to have a (perhaps battery operated) TV in a holiday caravan, so long as your TV back home is not being used. It's like seat licensing for software.
If a TV receiving phone were used out of the house while the home TV were in use, you could be fined. (Catching you is another matter entirely however).
NEC's model can receive terrestrial VHF TV transmisions.
Samsung's model can receive satellite television.
There is an enormous difference.
Donald Duck is going to have a SCREAMING ORGASM when he gets ahold of one of these. Especially if he can use it to watch Daisy Duck pr0n.
Listen in on Donald Duck!
A vital step towards realizing the service -- the successful launch of the satellite that will carry the programming -- has yet to be made.
Looks like we won't be seeing this for a few years, at least.
If you must build a network of repeaters won't you effectively make this a groundbased and not satelite based service?
The article was not clear if it was possible to build such a network without these ground repeaters.
Most ground based transmission is already based on satelite feed so what is new?
is a home-theatre-set with a phone built in
This could substantially increase the number of satellite TV subscribers, which in the United States is still a distant second to cable television.
In the US, they'll market the phone with a TV socket and extension cords.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You can already watch any cable TV channel on your cell phone, but it's done in-network and not receiving directly from the satelite like this Japanese system.
Here the telco streams it to your phone over 3G. The advantage is that it works anywhere there's network coverage - which is everywhere including the entire Seoul subway network (tunnels, trains, everywhere).
The disadvantage is that you pay through the nose for the packets!
maybe I am wrong but don't we leave the house so we can do things other than watch TV...or is this a substitue for doing work at work or when your favorite show is on and you have to pick up the kids so now you can do both? Here's a sidenote to think about: Cellphones use basicly 1 sense and thats hearing which is an important sense but you do have sight so you can concentrate on other things like walking or driving (people argue with this one but truck drivers have been talking on CBs for many years now and they seem ok...maybe not), basicly do whatever. But TVs use both Sight and Hearing...what are you gonna use to walk down the street, smell? Maybe when the Segway takes over for using our legs for walking and they put in cruise control than we will be ready for Mobile TV
Trix are for kids!
Honestly, why would I accuse someone I don't know of plagiarism if it weren't true?
Because you're a troll?
...until DirecTV sue everybody who bought one of these phones but didn't buy a subscription
You're doing it wrong.
once again, pron channels will be the most watched thing.. lets be honest Porn is the greatest driver of technology anywhere (VHS, Internet, DVD) ect.
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
Humor aside, it's kind of weird to see people take more and more steps into a kind of nomadic existence. . .
In other words, returning to a more normal, although more technolgical, state of human existence.
Yes, I'm even choosing to take your joke seriously. My 75 year old aunt sold her grand victiorian mansion a few years ago and bought an RV. She now says she'll never live in a house again and wonders why anyone does.
Mobility is humanity. It's only weird to you because you grew up in the narrow little slice of history where people were tied to piles of cinderblock by, rather short, electrical umbilical cords.
KFG
Gipsy scum!
I'm just gonna sit back in my nice recliner here, eat this cheeseburger and watch mobile phone TV 'till the checks start rolling in...what the? Am I moving? HOLY CR@#kjl3.@!.*
Of course there have also been times when men have been tied to servitude, xenophobia and other forms of bigotry and blind hatred.
"The old days are o'er there's none can deny
The days of the traveler's over
There's nowhere to go and there's nowhere to bide
So fareweel to the life o' the rover
Goodbye to the tent and the old caravan
The tinker, the tailor, the travling man
And goodbye to the thirty foot trailer."
Perhaps these new technologies will give the rover a bit of a leg up over the squatter scum again.
KFG
The handset design is one thing, but I'd really like to see the design of the satellite.
Since the article discusses the use of a single satellite, for use by Korea and Japan only, one concludes that the satellite must be in geosynchronous orbit (otherwise there would be service outages as it passed behind the earth). That puts it 22,300 miles up (in the Clarke Belt).
Since the Clarke Belt is so far away, a combination of
high transmitter power in the satellite,
good sensitivity (low noise figure) in the receiver back on Earth, and
high antenna gain at both transmitter and receiver
are typically used to make the link work. Modern satellite television (e.g., DirecTV) uses a relatively high frequency of operation (12 GHz) so that high antenna gain can be achieved in a physically small (i.e., less than two foot diameter) package. However, the article says that the proposed system operates at 2.6 GHz. This would seriously kill any hope of significant antenna gain at the receiver, even if one could design a gain antenna that could track a satellite in a mobile, handheld system.
Said another way, in the DirecTV system, the typical Earthside antenna has a gain of about 33.5 dBi. The handheld antenna gain will be doing well to reach 0 dBi. Since the DirecTV receiver has a noise figure of only 1 dB, no receiver sensitivity improvement is possible there. The only way to get back the 33.5 dB of link margin is to either increase the satellite's antenna gain by an additional 33.5 dB (which would make it impractically large, especially given the low frequency of operation, and give it a very small footprint on the Earth's surface) or increase the transmitter power by 33.5 dB (or 2239x).
How is the system to work?? Does anyone have a link margin calculation for this system?
Now they need to put a full chess program into my cell phone! It will be embarassing, though, when it beats me at chess.
Who moved my sig?
Aren't we slowly turning our Biosphere into a huge Magnetron and becoming a cooked society?
Remember we're talking Japan, not America. Very low car to pedestrian ratio, and very low incidence of huge-ass SUVs.
Your point stands, but I doubt this will be as bad as you seem to be inclined to believe. In the US I suspect it would be a nightmare...of steel and blood!
I dreamed of the day when I could watch Satellite TV in all it's glory on a small LCD display
Instead of putting it on cellphones, why don't they focus on a consumer-price oriented portable DVD player with, let's say, a satellite TV reciever on it? I love DirecTV and, if a device like this was affordable (Considering.. i'm thinking around $500) better yet... when's the DirecTV Car satellite coming? Big SUVs with CNN playing in the back... ahh
Technology is great.... but can't they actually come up with something USEFUL instead of trying to sell on the 'Ohhh, ahhh' factor?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Why not? If it causes more consumers to buy Samsung products, where's the problem?
Oh yeah, the sheep issue...
More and more, we are seeing that those who are not on a leash from their masters eschew (sorry, but that was the best word) ever-connectivity.
true, but it would be pretty good for the train/bus trip to and from work.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
One word answer for you:
Trains
You have to remember that we're talking about Japan, where your entire commute consists of just sitting there, reading a book, or, if you're out of reading materials, slowly going mad.
I must correct my parent post - the license covers the use of any and all equipment capable of receiving TV signals. It is not illegal to merely own TV receiving equipment, only to use it to receive TV programme services that originate from within the UK.
I'm not up on cell phones, so maybe you can tell me that such a thing already exists.
I want a stupid simple AM radio in my cell phone, so that in case of blackouts, terrorist attacks, transportation shutdowns, or just huge snowstorms, I can listen to the news. (Yes, I live in a large city where I've experienced all these things in the past five years).
I doubt it, the tv license covers a household of televisions. You pay for one license if the every member of the household all have their own TVs and watch them at the same time, so I don't see why it would be different this way. Especially if it's battery operated.
(Catching you is another matter entirely however).
Well that would be even easier - if you were outside using it they wouldn't need a warrant to get in your house to catch you!
With this technology you can do it freehand.
Less is more !
since all modern cellphones have fast processors + hi speed data + RF rx and tx capabilities + colour screen + sometimes a camera too, receiving tv channels via a digital tunnel through the usual repeaters and/or making real video conferencing shouldn't be news at all.
One thing I'm pretty sure of is that service will be marketed as the last tech marvel and will cost an huge amount of money to the users.
Am I wrong or cellphones are proportionally the most expensive and less advanced (I mean the services, not the platform) piece of technology in use today?
But I can have 5 TVs on at once at home
**runs round house**
infact i do have 5 TVs on now.
So, at the moment I am covered by my TV liscence but if I were to turn on a portable TV it would suddenly be illegal?
A bit of a tanjent - but there are some interesting laws to do with lodgers. If you have a lock on your door you need your own TV liscence. Now, I know some people who still live with their parents (the 18 year old kind not the 44 year old virgin kind) who have locks on their doors.
They are renewing the BBCs charter in the next couple of years. Instead of trying to change the way the BBC works perhaps they should update the TV liscence to reflect the technology we currently and may soon have at our disposal.
This could include phones, PDAs, Webcasting, computers both roaming and tethered, Cars, and god knows what else.
The OFDM modulation scheme for DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) can transmit multiple copies of the same signal on the same channel and a receiver can use the sum of all transmissions to get the best reception.
This lets you, for example. receive the DAB signal in your car where there is a line-of-sight to the satellite and when you enter a city with its obscuring buildings the satellite signal is augmented by a local repeater that receives the satellite signal and then retransmits it on the same frequency.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Have those things improved at all? Is there any viable new video goggle/glasses technology on the horizon? The problem with so many small devices capable of doing video or even more traditional computer-based work is the tiny screens, or the companion problem, the requirement for a larger screen making the overall device too big for easy portability.
Even on an airplane where lugging my laptop is an option, it's a problem. If I'm in a non-emergency row coach seat, I have to hold my laptop with the bottom tipped up towards me so I can hold the screen at a decent viewing angle. It gets worse if the person in front of me decides to lean their seat all the way back; I end up with my laptop essentially rotated 90 degrees away from me.
It will be a huge leap forward for portable video and computing when we can get large displays without needing even the relatively small space of an airline seat. I know that the previous (current?) iterations of video goggles kind of sucked; too big, too power intensive, too hard on the eyes, whatever. Anything getting better?
Yes, my point is that the TVness of the phone is not new because Vodafone has it already. What Samsung is developing will be yet another TV phone, only this time it will receive satellite broadcasting. The satelliteness of the phone is news.
Here in Tokyo, we use our mobile phones all the time to send and receive email and play video games, especially while riding the train. The three most common things to see on the train: people sleeping, people reading, and people typing on their phones.
Watching TV on your phone is a logical next step. The only problem being the size of the screen. It's hard to watch something that small for a long period of time. However, for the short period of time most people will want to watch it (say the 10 or 20 minutes between Nishi-Nippori and Ikebukuro), it is a perfect distraction.
Consumption of media in Japan is huge. It is a highly visual culture. Look out of any window in a metropolitan area and you will see billboards and neon in any direction. The stations and trains are no different: advertisements are plastered not only to the sides above the seats, but hang from the ceiling inside the train. Some of the trains on the Yamanote line have video screens placed in the cars which show brief videos of the weather and commercials.
Having your own TV reception in the phone at least allows those people addicted to visual stimuli to choose their own poison.
What will be truly interesting is how long before these TV phone models are offered for free to new subscribers. Note: each year, the previous year's models are given away for anywhere from 0 to 100 Yen to new subscribers (or those who are willing to change their phone numbers). 100 yen = $0.97
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
Interestingly, the subject line is still correct. The TV license flies in the face of the European Treaty on Human and Political Rights; it contains an article on the right to receive signals; this was put in specifically because the Nazis required you to have a license to operate a radio receiver, so they could be sure only Nazis had radios, and not the sort of people who would listen to foreign broadcasts (broadcasts, incidentally, by the British).
This is one of the reasons why The Netherlands switched from a license fee to just paying the public channels out of taxes, apart from the obvious cost of enforcing licenses.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
...this idea might at first sound retarded (who'd want to watch TV on their cell phone?), but it's actually something I thought of over a year ago as something that would be a really novel feature, especially for the type of people who find themselves sitting around waiting for extended periods playing games. (For examples, teens who can't yet drive waiting for a ride.)
I'm eager to see the next step: we can now receive TV, and we can now transmit pictures. I'm waiting for the phone that has a built-in camera on the side of the phone you put to your face, so you can hold it at arms length and have a real-time videoconference with someone. It would take a good deal of bandwidth, but it'd be pretty neat to be able to have a videoconference with anyone you could talk to on a cell phone.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
$160 a year so you get your ads in well-produced and entertaining 15-mintue blocks after two hours of NOTHING instead of cheaply shot headache inducing 5-minute blocks every ten minutes? STFU.
"(...)Samsung makes it possible to receive satellite TV transmissions in 2.6 GHz range.(...) for clarity of the signal the company is currently installing a network of repeaters."
I wonder if this can affect the japanese wireless comunity, since the 802.11b/g protocol runs on the 2.4-2.5GHz freq. range
Actually, you'd be surprised at the number of huge SUVs you see as you walk around Tokyo. Of course there are plenty of tiny Japanese cars too, but SUVs are by no means rare.
What, you've never walked while reading a book? Peripheral vision is your friend.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Uh, define "narrow slice of history". You would be more accurate to say that the nomadic way of life is a phase that a given society goes through until they discover that agriculture surpasses hunting and gathering as a way of sustaining a population. Once that occurs, then villages form, then cities. When a people realize that the land yields sustenance and wealth, some form of property rights take hold. Mostly those rights favor some kind of Big Man or hierarchy over the people who actually work the land, but the rules serve to tie the people to the land even more. As the better fed people of the agricultural society expand, they crowd out the nomads and push that way of life into history. You can see this happening right now, in certain parts of Africa, as the last of the nomadic tribes are supplanted by urban dwellers and farm workers.
Yeah, they're driven by the marine assholes from the millitary bases there. One of the bastards damn near ran me off the road in one once when I was riding my motorcycle (a "baby blade" CBR400) near Yokohama one Saturday arvo.
The point is, I think O only ever saw US Mil. personell driving anything approaching an SUV over there - if you don't count the Yak boys in their black Mercs.
We all know cellphones batteries suck as it is. How much power usage is this satelite tv phone gonna suck?
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
Great, since previously email and SMS spam was the only form of advertising available on my fancy new phone, which I spent big bucks on for the sole purpose of keeping up with the latest trends in advertising, certainly not for keeping in touch with family and friends.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Every day, my cell phone drops out TWICE during my five mile commute to work, but the Japanese get 70 channels of TV on their cellphones?!?! WTF?!? They also have those fancy toilets that blow ours away. What's it like in Tokyo this time of year?
If someone walking down the street can receive satellite tv on a tiny phone, then why do I have to aim this 18" dish at exactly the right spot in the sky to get anything on a real tv ?
If someone's invented good quality live TV! Not for driving of course, but for all the other stuff I find myself doing while parked waiting for a work order to ring in. Right now I'm limited to loud music and watching DivX on the laptop. And believe me these waits can get really long. I've been wishing for a good TV-input accessory for my laptop for months (to hook up the Xbox).
For those people like me who work, eat and sleep in their cars, mobile toys are a godsend!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I'd rather see something like XM or Sirius (preferably XM) available via cellphone. They've already got phones with FM capability, and XM (not sure about Sirius) has a network of ground-based repeaters in most urban areas. I can't imagine ever sitting around for very long in an area where I'd get good reception for a sat TV signal and not have a real TV around (campus, home, hospital/work...). Am I the only one that turns my cell phone off when I'm driving?
Give me my XM.
The 3 tier model would be better for these mobile phones than the monolithic one. I want a phone that can connect to data, regardless of the datatype or content. Making the most reliable wireless broadband Internet connection, with redundant bands and even ISPs, is the best role for the phone itself. Give me another unit with the codecs, and another with the GUI (display and controls). If it's bundled into a microelectronic wonder that all fits in my pocket in one pod, that's great. But I don't want vertical integration of the player and the transmission protocol. I want convergence, and I can get it with 3G "phones" that are designed for flexibility. Download satellite codecs to the DSP, or a Flash player, depending on the available data. Put the RF research into a "universal antenna", so I can receive on any available band. Don't stick me with a one trick pony, that I use for awhile when I'm interested in a satellite program, but drop in 6 months when my favored content switches media.
--
make install -not war
Now with 50% more tumor-producing features!
thehomeland(.org)
To be fair, my girlfriend drives her mom's SUV (and I have no idea why her mom has an SUV). However, considering the speeds you drive at (5 mph) in heavily populated areas (Shibuya), getting hit by an SUV isn't much more of a big deal than being hit by a compact.
What would the battery life be on such a device. My cell phone (A Motorola v60g BTW) only JUST makes it through a single day on one battery at full charge, and that's for a black-and-white screen that's off half the time (when the phone is flipped closed). And I don't even talk on my phone too too much. For an often-on, long-viewing, satellite-receiving, full colour video phone, I can't imagine the battery life would even border on "acceptable".
As a side note: I'm assuimg this phone has the typical 2" (max) screen. That's an awfully small screen to watch TV on. I wonder if there's really a demand for this (after all, one of the reasons Steve Jobs says there's no video iPods is because nobody wants to watch TV on a screen that small-a statement I would tend to concur with).
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
STFU
No.
In japan people rely on public transportation. In my daily commute to work I spend a total of 1 hour 30 minuts in subway. I would love to have this phone. But the question is, how noisy are the headphones?
You are wrong :|