Slashdot Mirror
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."
Will I be able to buy/build a device to receive this signal and decode it? Will I have to pay any monthly fees for this?
It would be great to use my laptop to receive this service. Much bigger screen, better speakers.
NO, you can't buy those phones here in Pittsburgh yet. Only CDMA and analog cell phones!
Seriously, hooray for Pittsburgh (I live here too), but there's almost no reason for it -- people here are so happy with dialup, if they even bother with the Internet anyway.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
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.
the cellular phones have been plenty of good enough as phones in every _properly_built_ network for around past 10 years.
bitch about the network or the chosen tech if it's crap where you are. the phone manufacturers can't do miracles and nor will the network manufacturers build the networks for free for cheapass operators if they don't want to cough of the dough(apparently stupid tie-in plans make better marketing than proper networks in some places).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I live in Norway. The biggest telephone operator just opened 3G/UMTS mobile network. I can therefore watch television on my Nokia 6630. The live broadcast is 15-20 seconds behind normal tv. The quality is not great, but good.
RTFA. It doesn't use cellular bandwidth.
From 2006, mobile phones will be offering crisp, clear TV pictures. But the pictures will not be coming over the cellphone network - they will be sent from transmitters already used for TV broadcasts. And this means a completely new breed of phones will be necessary to pick them up.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
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
...battery life and practical viewable area on a phone.
Well, the obvious question to me is what is new about this?
Is it just because we're talking United States here? If you read through this thread, people are acting as if watching TV on a phone is some kind of new idea. (Your post being one example.) I mean the size of the screen and the battery life are not open questions, because TV-enabled phones have been on the market for over a year (if not more) around the world.
Am I missing something?