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TV On Cellphones Ever Closer
Yurian writes "Seems that the new breed of cell-phones are being readied to receive digital TV. The standard has been finalized and handsets are in test.
The emergence of DVB-H explains a puzzling purchase made last year by Crown Castle of Houston, Texas. The company, which runs the BBC's transmitter network in the UK, paid $12 million for a 5-megahertz slice of coast-to-coast radio spectrum in the US.
At the time no one knew why. But Crown Castle transmitters near Pittsburgh are already broadcasting DVB-H to prototype Nokia mobile TV phones. That purchase may turn out to be an amazing bargain, considering other operators paid billions for 3G licenses which were originally meant to deliver video services."
Near Pittsburgh? I live in Pittsburgh. Is there a way I could obtain a cell phone that could tap into the digital TV service?
-b0lt
got sig?
Who really needs to watch TV on a cellphone?
...battery life and practical viewable area on a phone.
And how about the "roamability" when you're in another country using other standards?
While it's good to have all-in-one gadgets, there are things that just can't be integrated. I think a make-up mirror is good on a phone so that you can talk while looking/grooming yourself, or maybe a ear-cleaner that cleans your ear while you're on the phone?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
This could have potential. Remember that story a while back about having a remote control to shut of televisions in public? I can't count how many times I've wanted to shut off a cellphone in public.
(Usually my wife's.)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Don't you mock me!
Anyways...I'm suprised the Japanese didn't get this first. They use their cell phones for everything, everywhere. You'll never be on a train without 5 or 6 people playing games or checking things out on their keitai.
Now I can watch all of the Benny Hill reruns while I'm on the run... ;)
How are they going to tell television on such a tiny screen no matter how good they manage to make the picture? Going from cinema picture to a tiny normal TV is bad enough, looking at a stamp size picture doesn't sound very nice no matter how great they make the picture.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
What is it about TV that people want to watch it everywhere? Are the commercials that good?
" ...battery life and practical viewable area on a phone."
Put in an RTG and use a lower frequency.
"And how about the "roamability" when you're in another country using other standards?"
Disposable cell phones are getting more common for travelers.
"While it's good to have all-in-one gadgets, there are things that just can't be integrated. I think a make-up mirror is good on a phone so that you can talk while looking/grooming yourself, or maybe a ear-cleaner that cleans your ear while you're on the phone?"
Silence you! I'm annoyed that I can't use a cell phone to start my car!
Why is this necessary when some networks and/or aggregators are already allowing content providers to send content via the 3G cellular network? Isn't this a better path anyway, being circuit switched and having a return path for video, audio and interactive feedback?
A quick search on Google for "video short codes" brings up:
3
MX TELECOM
Is anyone else imagining people watching Seinfeld reruns and the Simpsons during their evening commute home?...and not paying attention to driving?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
6 posts and not one of you has made a pr0n/mini-pr0n joke.
I think this is really good, now we never again need to encounter one of those akward moments wherein we must occupy time with our own thoughts.
...
So I watch the news on my phone, and the battery gets drained faster then me after 10 beers. Great going. For me phones need to do 2 things: 1. Being able to make a phone call 2. Being able to send a short message. THe rest is voodoo mumbo jumbo. Who concurs?
Slashdot 1|0 Productivity
Previous posts got it right: TV on phones is a stupid idea in the U.S., where so many people commute by car. They've got this in Japan already - not sure how uptake is going, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense if you're riding a train for two hours a day than if you drive to and from work.
I guess that the market wouldn't be for whole TV shows, but for short clips like sports highlights and maybe music videos. Still, who needs it? We already have pocket-sized portable TVs, and how often do you see someone carrying one of those around?
Yet another lame "if we have this we'll have a million accidents" whine. The bottom line is, if people want to not pay attention to driving, they'll do that with or without the help of TV on their cellphone, or onboard DVD players, or fax machines. Some drivers are just an accident waiting to happen. The rest are mature enough to keep paying attention to driving.
Now that could be fun.
And how do you watch the screen with the phone pressed to your ear?
Some products were not made to be combined. A cell phone iPod combination makes sense, a cell phone TV doesn't. HDTV on your cellphone screen is even sillier. You want a screen at least 5cm square, 10cm for HD.
My rights don't need management.
They worked with Mitsubishi to build torpedoes during WWII. You are spending money to help war criminals.
As if hearing the ahole next to me blabbering away at the top of his voice wasn't bad enough, now I get to listen to Jerry Springer do it too.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
If they already have Wristwatch Televisions, putting a TV on cell phone shouldn't be that hard.
how do you watch the screen with the phone pressed to your ear?
You must be a newfie.
Now watching GOATSE-TV live 24/7.
How bout a fucking phone that works reliably first? Then you jackasses can start adding on the hamster wheels and bright shiny shit.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I've seen a prototype 3G phone playing a live TV stream. I agree with a lot of others - what's the point? I've heard that FOX is already developing short clips targeted at mobile phones. This sounds just like another annoying thing people will do with their phones in public places without using headphones.
Perhaps someday I'll understand why the mobile phone has become a target for all entertainment. I never thought ringtones could become a multi-billion dollar business, but it is. Maybe TV-on-mobile will become the same way. Or maybe it will lose its novelty quickly. Either way, the carriers stand to make cash from it.
TV phones have been around here in Japan for at least 2 years now. Slashdot always does this. I hate those articles like "china releases first ever...." when Japan has been doing it for years. EG: the story about the mag-lev train a while back. I'd ridden a commercial mag lev waaay before that here in Japan. I understand this time they are talking about US/N. America, but come on.
When I see the fist wave of 6G phones that have a shaver and toothbrush attatchment - then i'll be impressed
- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
I am actually psyched about TV on my Nokia. Unfortunately, how can I get my content distributed for cell phone use? Since I live in pittsburgh, I'll make the call tomorrow. Why don't we have video conferecing using our camera phones yet?
Really, a reliable cell phone is key, but if manufacturers are going to include bells and whistles, it makes sense to engineer them properly -- Nokia's 3650 rotary-dial keypad is a really bad idea, but I'm stuck with it if I want bluetooth, IR, and MMC card slot.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I hope they watch their bandwidth. XM satellite radio ran out so they cut back the sound quality on their stations.
Is this going to be awesome at first, then they get overzealous and compress the crap out of everything?
The people who provide monthly cell service (the carriers) often make a profit by choosing low-bitrate codecs, as well as over-subscribing cell towers, and thus frequently dropping calls when a cell tower reaches its capacity. 95% cell tower utilization = more profit for the carrier. 95% cell tower utilization = crappy quality for the customer. Same story as cable modems.
Ok, besides the fact that this will be probably be the most abused excuse for why someone got in a car wreck "but your honor, I was watching CNN!" it will also be another horible waste of bandwidth. as if we didn't chew up enough with people sending inane photos of themselves and their dog Poochie, now we're going to eventually have a ton of highschool and college age ass-hats sending vids of themselves doing dangerous/stupid/illegal things, because basicly it's funny, right? Great. Because logically, the conclusion of being able to receive TV programs as downloadable video is being able to send on-the-spot vid caps, uploads, the latest Jenna Jameson porno - who knows? I get enough stupid crap from people already thinking I want to read / see something they think is humorous. You think spam is a bandwidth waster? Wait until this goes full bore.
I'll make phone calls on my TV before I watch TV on my cell phone.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Speaking of which. The FCC is going to reverse themselves, and allow in-flight cell-phone calls.
You'll never be able to escape the things.
An example of where TV-on-cellphones would be useful.... on September 11th, is there any doubt that if most people had TV-on-cellphones, that everyone not near a TV would have been glued to their cell phone, watching video clips?
Anyway, my main question is... why come up with a new standard? It seems like most cell phones will support TCP/IP in the future.... why not simply use any/all of the existing streaming-video standards that are available? (eg. Windows Media, Real, MPEG... most of these already have embedded implementations).
3g is an inet connection. Watching a video stream via 3g would be like watching a stream on the internet. This however, is not an internet, instead its a dedicated service like your cable company. So your tied in to what is programmed for you, no setting up shoutcast servers or anything like that.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Just what we need. People driving around watching cellphone TV instead of the road in front of them.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Sounds very convenient and a nice way to be entertained and informed while waiting for things, or when you want to ignore people around you. For sound I assume that wireless bluetooth headsets can be used.
http://www.look.ca/page.asp?intNodeID=16641
Disclaimer: I work for the above-mentioned company.
TV on cell phones is already offered in other parts of the world. Swisscom in Switzerland (link), for example.
I've seen so many posts of people just not getting it. All seem to concur nobody wants tv on their phone. Well, tests in Korea have shown that it was the first application that overloaded that their 3g network. I think many of us are too big a geek to see through the eyes of a 13 to 30 year old woman with a small, dull job and ditto man. The soap watching type. This is also the type that buys stupid ringtones. Well, they are the ones where the real money comes from and they will buy in to this. I promiss you. Either this or 3G soap of the day on demand.
Use Adsense for Charity
Y'know, they've had this in Korea, I don't even know how long--it's not ubiquitously used, but I was pretty impressed the first time I saw it. Nifty toy, if nothing much more.
Sorry to burst your little American bubble, but cell phones that receive TV are old news in Japan.http://www.jiten.com/dicmi/docs/k9/15861.htm is the only link I could easily find that included a bit of English. Some of the dates are last year, but the ones I glanced at seemed to be reviews, so the phones must have been available before that. I can't recall when the phones actually became available.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
And how do you watch the screen with the phone pressed to your ear?
I imagine that a combination of sidetalkin + small mirror would provide an adequate solution...
As if the cellphone wasnt another higlight of human degeneracy, adding a tv to it will bring us another low point in cultural development.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
So yeah, TV on a cellphone, great. 5 mins of somethin' before ur battery dies. Wuts the point?
As long as they design it so you HAVE to plug in an earbud or something to hear the broadcasts sound, I don't really see this being a big deal though.
w/ current battery life, this could lower annoying cellphone use as a whole. Oops killed my battery watchin' 5 mins of CSI, guess I can't take any calls at the theatre.
No sig for you!!
This thing is going to be on the streets here in the US by early next year, just got released in Asia last week. The usage is geared more towards mobile TV then cellphone use. If there was more functionality as a phone, it might be appealing.
...and it should be known by now
Huh? ...what a daft sentence! Like there's any chance it's ever going to be further away. If people are out there making it happen, of course it'll get closer
Wireless TV isn't exactly a cutting-edge innovation anyway. In the beginning, all TV was wireless. Then we got cable, which cost more, but it was supposed to be better. Now we're gonna pay even more to go back to wireless.
What's next, cable cell phones?
Will UK users have to pay TV licensing fees for these TV phones?
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Currently there's about 20 different channels, Fox, CNN, Discovery Channel, Discovery Channel en espanol, etc.
It's a soft rolloout so no announcements yet. Which is a good thing since we'd (customer service) would get a kajillion irate callers screeching about not being able to watch streaming video on their analog bag phones.
Oh god, I hope I just didn't /. Cingular customer service :O
This is a typical /. knee-jerk reaction thread, so I'll attempt to point out the other (good) side to this, karma be damned:
-News clips.
-Short video clips.
yes, someone WILL think of a good way to use this service.
disclaimer: I don't necessarily think this is a great idea.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Imagine a world where your "cable box" is reduced to the form factor of a cell phone and you can carry it around with you. TV/Broadband Internet/VOIP could all be combined in such a device and you could cart it around to use wherever you happen to be standing. That is the future. Countries that have monopolistic companies with huge amounts of $$$ invested in obsolete coax or fiber to the curb won't allow this in the "developed" world, but it will be joining you soon in the 2nd and 3rd world. Film at 11...on your cell phone.
Cheers,
Some products were not made to be combined. A cell phone iPod combination makes sense, a cell phone TV doesn't. HDTV on your cellphone screen is even sillier. You want a screen at least 5cm square, 10cm for HD.
I was playing with a phone this afternoon with a screen 5cm square, and only a few mm thick. Talking about TV and HDTV doesn't make any sense. Surely it will be a digitally encoded low-res signal tailored to small screens. I know a number of people that pay good money just to get the football (soccer) scores as they happen via SMS. If they can get the rights to show the goals too then someone is going to make a killing.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Headsets. If the (New York/Florida/Japanese/insert place here) government is going to make them mandatory for drivers, we may as well have more applications for phones with headsets. There are also some phones with built-in speakers. A lo-res TV would be a great application for a cell phone, IMO. If we were going to go to HD, we would probably have to install a tiny projector so people could watch it on a wall...
In Korea, only old people watch TV on their mobiles...
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
This has been around in Japan for atleast a year. Vodafone does it and features it prominantly in their male-targeted adverts on TV. The quality is fairly good and with stereo headphones available on some handsets it's not really any worse than watching on a normal TV.
There are some quality issues if you're watching while moving though, atleast in my experience.
This will bring a new dimension to mobile phones - video calling was pretty stupid, who the fuck even uses that!? but this will change everything, schools and colleges results will suddenly fall as everyone just watches TV, entire parties where usually only a few people hide behind their phone, will now be totally silent with everyone just watching TV. People will watch TV in the cinema, in church, in the tube.. ok maybe not.. but people getting hit by cars is gonna go right up!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Here in Australia, Optus Zoo have been streaming the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN live for quite some time now. It's been available ever since I got my Nokia 6600 phone, and that was back in March or so.
:(
It's not exactly something I do a lot of, but it is cool to show people. The quality is roughly equivalent to RealMedia files circa 1997. Damn Optus and it's slow GPRS network
I tried MobiTV on sprint. I have a brand new phone that is allegedly capable of 15fps or so. With MobiTV I get, at best, 1-2 frames a second. For anything other than a newscaster, it's absolutely worthless. I can't believe people actually pay EXTRA for it. P.T. Barnum was right.
Automatic nose picker, while you talk on the phone.
"Shave and a 6G, TWO BITS!"
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
" And how do you watch the screen with the phone pressed to your ear?
A hands-free/headset. Either wired or Bluetooth.
- -- Truth addict for life.
In the great state of South Carolina it's illegal to have a tv/video screen in direct line of sight from the driver seat of a vehicle. Does this mean they're finally gonna outlaw talking on cellphones while driving? I'll keep my fingers crossed!
I was at the Sprint store today. They have advertisements for their new PCS Vision TV service all over the place. There are phones in there with speakerphone capability, which would be adequate for television audio. They're also selling stereo headphones and phones that output stereo sound.
One might think television on a phone is silly but people were also saying a web browser on a phone is silly. I know plenty of people who paid for the PCS internet services. TV on the phone might not be practical but it might be big fun...
If you have modpoints, give them to the parent please. It's the most often made mistake people make in this thread and he's the first to point people to it.
- -- Truth addict for life.
Sprint has already been offering something of the kind
From this page:
Sprint TV - This comprehensive basic service presents a variety of content from familiar brands. Think of it as "basic cable" for your phone.
I'm sure others have pointed this out but TV cell phones have already been available in Japan and Korea for over a year
/ ez web/au_dakara&content_id=ez_movie
/ ez web/au_dakara&content_id=ez_channel
Both the type with a TV tuner in the phone AND the type that stream the TV digitally over the net.
http://www.au.kddi.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?entry=
http://www.au.kddi.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?entry=
Gets old afer several thousand years. No other country has an ego, right? lol
I'm living in korea as an English teacher, they have had this for at least a year now (that's how long I've been here). Always crazy commercials for it on TV.
http://www.arraycomm.com/gpm/australia.htm
http://www.arraycomm.com/news/pr_detail.htm?id=82
http://www.iburst.com.au/site/news/newsview.php?id =27
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2Barraycomm+ %2B%22crown+castle%22
Disclaimer: I'm a former employee of Arraycomm who worked on iBurst hardware. I own stock in Arraycomm.
Now I can cause Dukes of Hazzard reruns to be continually interrupted with flash news bulletins in full colour of the accidents I cause while driving and watching Dukes of Hazzard reruns!
I'm a huge advocate for Open Source, etc. as I imagine you are. But you're setting unrealistic expectations here. Every product can't be "open". These guys put up capital to buy a range of the broadcast spectrum. They're going to need to recoup their investment and then some. So, yes. They're going to charge fees.
If you're looking for a 'free' laptop TV solution, here you go. USB TV tuner with linux drivers. It'll pull in whatever normal broadcast tv you can receive.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
First, I didn't see it noted that Japan has had digital TV broadcasting over mobile phones for almost a year now. The phone models are quite popular, and becasue they use terrestial digital broadcasting, there is no fee for the service just as there is no fee for the tiny handheld TVs one can buy at any electronics store. The software thunks the video down to QVGA, and the picture remains quite good.
Second, who needs this? I agree with the person who asks if we can imagine a user drivin gdown the freeway watching a Seinfeld re-run. That same person on a bus, train, or subway, however, is a happy camper. I live in Tokyo and watch CNNjp every morning on my commute.
Which brings us to the person who asked if they could get it on their PC. You can, and have been able to for a long time. Go buy a PC-Card-based TV solution or buy one of the new notebooks that has a tuner built-in. I don't think anyone is offering them with digital tuners yet, however...
The point of all this is that just because a technology works or doesn't work for one market does not mean that it will succeed or fail in another. DoCoMo has failed in the rest of the world but done wonderfully in Japan with its iMode web surfing for the same reason that TV-Mobile phones are doing well here -- You have millions of people on trains, buses, and subways for hours at a time. Since *nobody* talks on their mobile when riding public transport here (How wonderful is that?), they immerse themselves in Java games, MP3 players, web-surfing, radio, and TV. All of these are available to some degree or another in the USA as well, but except for MP3 players are not as popular as here in the land of life-numbing commutes. That said, because Japan's mobile operators have focused on gadget-laden phones, they have to subsidize the purchase costs heavily. and therefore we pay around $0.25-$0.30/minute to talk. The result is that we don't talk, but send packetized IMs and e-mails instead.
It's all in how you live...
Don't like the feature, thats fine, don't use it. But don't condemn an entire generation that is used to, and demands, all of their media at their fingertips.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I have one. I didn't ask for it. It came free on my phone when I purchaced service through Vodaphone which is a company in Japan where I live. It's awful. I've never, ever seen it work clearly. I can also record whatever I want off of the tv. All I have so far are very, very muzzy clips of sumo. My phone also has a radio which if the button on the side of the phone is ever so slightly nudged it turns on with a full volumned crackle and buzz that makes me and my neighbors on the train jump. If I could download an e-book or a movie and use the headset that came with the phone (also never used) I might think it's a good idea. Right now, I'd love it if I could get the stupid thing turned off. Take it from me, do not pay extra for this stupid service. What we really want is more solitare, black jack, and tetris.
Mo hitotsu no mustaado, onegaishimas!
That firt sentence should have read "If you have a TV licence for home then almost certainly not, as the device in question is mobile and capable of running on its own power, just like mobile TVs."
I was a bit over-zealous with my editing down of what I'd originally typed. Mea culpa.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Most posters seem completely clueless about DVB-H. Gone are the days when most of the comments on Slashdot were from experts. Anyway, I am a technolgy broadcaster and an engineer so I know this stuff well.
Firstly, DVB-H is the closest thing to a global broadcast standard we've ever had. It's a superset of DVB, the European DTV standard, but it's also going to be introduced in the USA even though they use ATSC.
Secondly, it's not just cell phones that are the target. Instead all handheld devices are targeted including PDAs, consoles and mobile terminals in cars and trains. The number of carriers and coding system have been designed to give excellent quality where ever you are, and more importantly even whilst moving at speed. Nothing like that terrible GPRS or 3G video on cellphones. This is 200k - 500kbps H.264 quality video and audio, with HiDef and codec upgrades possible in the future. The cellphone, however, does offer the all important back channel via a GPRS or WCDMA.
Third, DVB-H will more than likely end up as a digital radio standard as well, although the future of radio is predominantly video anyway - think audio, but pictures there if you really want to watch them. The people behind DAB in Europe are frightened DVB-H will make DAB redundant, and have attempted to counter with DMB - multimedia broadcasting, although it seems DVB-H is the one standard we need.
Fourth DVB-H will be useful on multiple frequency bands, allowing telecom networks to become pay broadcasters. It's another business model for the telcos who are rapidly seeing their core business vanish into thin air with call prices heading towards zero.
Aggressive target dates have been set to roll out DVB-H, and with Nokia's target of built-in receivers in 2005-06 phones, it's going to happen.
I find it incredible that only 3 years ago a Nokia 3310 was considered modern and hip, and now we already have phones with colour screens, TV, webbrowsers, good sound and whatnot. These developments are going really fast. There is one thing I miss though: a handy with an in-built answering machine. Leave it on in silent mode during meetings, and people can leave their messages directly on your machine so that you don't have to call your providers' expensive voice mail.
-- Cheers!
All you have to do is hook this baby up to a surround-sound system.
will you find men willing to admit they believe a woman would sooner have sex with a pony for a million dollars, than the guy himself.
I don't want only digital signal TV. I want analog too, so I can pick up whatever channels are broadcasting at the area I am in. Some people will say that TV on the cellphone is too much, but I think they are wrong: there are lots of times that watching TV is much more interesting than playing the stupid cellphone games...like when waiting in a queue, commuting (of course not driving at the same time) and lots of other moments (*cough bathroom *cough).
Oh grate.
So now you can experience all the thrills of crappy TV advertising on a teeny weeny cellphone screen. Wow what a great feature ! What progress !
Does anyone actually watch the idiot box any more ? I know I don't. If I'm going to have my intelligence insulted I'd rather go down the pub.
Hopefully this will see a few more morons, engrossed in their TV crud, run over by buses.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Its in the Band!
So if I'm on a bus and I watch an R rated clip, and a kid watches over my shoulder, who gets sued?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
At that point, what's a parent to do when he wants to get his kid a cellphone, but he doesn't want her hauling around a TV everywhere she goes--including school?
someone invents a "Tivo" cell phone so you can timeshift and record.... this is getting a little silly.
For streaming any media from your PC (which includes TV if you have a tuner) to most devices (laptop, PDA, cellphone), have a look at Orb. They are still in beta testing mode but they look pretty neat. The PC must be a XP MediaCenter however.
Actually, I met a few people that precisely use sidetalkin' and a mirror, most of them residing in North Bay, do you know it? Seems to be a great solution for North Bayters