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TV On Mobiles: Not Yet There?
rustbear writes "It seems that perhaps Apple did their homework when they decided to downplay the video capabilities of the new iPod. The Guardian reports that "Most [British] people have no desire to watch television on mobile phones, preferring to use home computers to watch TV while on the internet, according to new research. Although 65% of British consumers surveyed cite the mobile phone as their most desired gadget, 70% of mobile owners said they did not want to watch television on their phone at all. Nearly 45% of consumers said they would watch TV on their home computer, because it enabled them to choose what they wanted to watch and when." Is the mainstream market not yet ready for portable video?"
The problem? Well, currently nobody really has a DVB-H network apart from a few trial areas in a handful a major cities. I understand that it's not too expensive to piggy-back DVB-H onto a DVB-T infrastructure, but it's still an expense.
Nokia are certainly taking a risk, but you know that's what business is about. Most consumers these days are demanding camera phones, for example, but a couple of years ago that wasn't even something that most handset manufacturers would have thought of. A lot of technlogies are like that - nobody really knows if the market wants them because they represent something new and untested.
Personally.. well, I'm the kind of geek who would sooner be surfing the web than watching TV, but I understand that watching TV is quite popular. Only the market can really decide if the concept is going to be a success.
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The only place I'd use a call phone to watch tv is on the jon.. while at work.
Mobile audio and mobile video are two different worlds. If you have a high quality audio file and a good pair of headphones, a mobile audio player can deliver a virtually perfect listening experience, anywhere. On top of that, you can multitask with an audio player. I can lull myself into a good coding mood listening to Garbage, load up some podcasts for the drive to work, or make a running playlist where the BPM of each song synches up with my feet hitting the ground; it's a beautiful synergy.
Video is nothing like this. I can't watch a TV show while I'm driving, exercising or working. More so, the immersion experience is relative to the size of the screen. No matter how big your TV screen is, you'd like to be watching a bigger one. If your screen is only a few inches large, I would guess that this distraction would be constant. Yes, Apple sold a million videos in no time flat, but I think this is just novelty. Apple's teeming hordes will buy any new iPod that comes out, and everyone who bought a video iPod probably purchased at least one video to try it out. We'll see if the trend continues.
Saying that mobile video is "Not Yet There" implies that the natural progression of technology will eventually make it more compelling. I disagree. Any TV screen that fits in your pocket will always be too small to be enjoyable, and it's very difficult to multitask when something requires both your eyes and ears. Mobile video will never be as ubiquitous as mobile audio is today.
domain combinatorics
Doesn't this beg the question of whether they will EVER be ready?
Despite their foibles and quirks, "the mainstream," bless their souls, sometime has a pretty good bead on what they think is bullshit and what is not. I think that TV on a cell phone is counted in the former category and not the latter.
Just because technology can do a thing, does not necessarily mean that it will ever be accepted by the "mainstream."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
I have never understood the appeal of those portable DVD players, the one good thing about I suppose is that you can plug them into your television if you have one handy. So its not surprising that the video ipod has a tv out, i had no real desire for a portable video player, but that tv out instantly gets me interested, I can put anything I can get from the internet on to the ipod video and watch it on my telly in my living room.
I think there is a good chance now that sony will re-release the PSP with a tv out, if they did I would definitely pick one up.
...if it, you know, worked better. iTunes under XP won't export videos to the iPod, just hangs ... I guess it works for a lot of people, but there's a number of people complaining in the support forums. Fortunately I only care about one video, Wave Twisters ...
"Is the mainstream market not yet ready for portable video?"
Not ready? Or perhaps people just aren't interested in trying to walk around downtown while staring down at a tiny screen trying to make out what the people on the screen are doing.
To me it sounds like a mugging waiting to happen.
> Is the mainstream market not yet ready for portable video?
With respect, this is disingenuos. Succesful products never wait until the mainstream market is 'ready' for any new product, if they did, then another company taking a risk would be the ones who get the marketshare. The key item here is 'disruptive technology'.
An example of disruptive technology is the 8" hard drive. The 14" hard drives were fast and stored a lot of data, but few of the disk companies bothered to make 8" drives when they came out because they were slower and didn't store as much data. Not only that, but they cost more per megabyte. But the market for Minicomputers demanded lower cost (even if it was higher cost per meg) overall drives, so they started improving. Only one or two hard drive companies from the 14" market survived the switch to 8" drives because they didn't see the benefit, and their customers didn't either, until it was too late.
The same thing happened again when the 5.25" HDs came out. Only a couple manufacturers of 8" drives stayed in business, and only because they spent money on the 5.25" drives well before they were good enough to sell, or profitable.
Finally, look at the excavating market: Up until the 1940s, steam shovels were all cable activated. They used cables to lift the arms and control the scoop, not hydraulics. When the first hydraulic dirt movers came out, they couldn't move anywhere near as much dirt and they cost more to operate, but eventually they became more powerful, safer, and cheaper to own and operate then cable operated stuff. NONE of the steam shovel companies that were in business in the 1940s survived past the 1950s because they didn't see the benefit of selling what they saw as inferior technology, which hydraulics definately were in the beginning.
This created opportunities for the startups to dominate the small hydraulics market unopposed until they were able to grow into and take over the domain of the cable operated steam shovel.
Cell phone video sucks right now, and doesn't _sound_ smart to the mainstream market. After all, it's not as high quality as DVD now, and it has lots of deficiencies, but they know that eventually, the market for digital downloads of video may grow to compete with and even replace physical media sales. That's not what customers want right now, but the market and technologies change, so 5-10 years from now, customers will demand this, and whoever is in the business first will have lots of advantages.
Remember, what the customer wants is not always best, and if you spend your life following the customers requests only, you'll eventually go out of business when a disruptive technology appears. It happened to the 14" drive manufacturers who listened to their customers (who weren't interested in slower, lower capacity drives), and it could happen to the media industry that doesn't take a risk with this stuff. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk, but whoever takes the risk stands to reap the rewards, while everyone else has to play catch up, IF the technology takes off.
Just something to think about...
This smells like a very badly formed question. I would never want to watch TV on my home computer if I could 'choose wat and when to watch' on my TV.
My TV is way bigger than my PC, located in a far more confortable room. This answer looks like the question had too few possible options; if you could have video-on-demand on your TV you wouldn't dream of giving the above answer.
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
TV on mobiles have been 'there' in Japan for awhile now. It is pretty much a standard feature on all of the "free" phones you can get when you sign up for new service. Whether people actually watch TV on their phones is another question...
The desire for TV on a mobile isn't coming from consumers, it's being pitched to them by phone companies desperate to set themselves apart somehow.
Without a new feature to set themselves apart, they will be seen as technologically deficient. If the other guy has it, we must have it too.
Of course, whether TV is actually useable (much like early internet on cellphones) isn't really important. Only that it is offered to make someone sign a contract.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
One was the fact that most consumers would happily pay double or triple for their phone so they could get it without TV but with good reception and sound quality. However, the most daunting problem with video on phones still hasn't been addressed.
To learn about this problem, I invite you to watch my video on the subject. The documentary was filmed in hi-def and recoded to for streaming cell-phone transmission. Simply click the video screen below to start watching.
Video Screen -->> [=]
Thank you for watching. I hope it is quite clear why TV on cellphones isn't a mainstream desire.
In the issue of full disclosure, my company is working on displaying e-books on cell phones. You can see a preview below.
Cell-E-Book 2.0 -->> [N]
is that movie/ipod-likes screens are too small - 1. strain on eyes and 2. not many people can watch together
1. Hold it closer to your face. At the distance most people hold a paperback novel, it would be about the same relative "size" as looking at a 20" TV set from accross a small living room, which was actually a fairly typical viewing experience once upon a time.
2. Nobody else can hear the sound on your earphones anyway.
I think the video on the iPod is not really all that impressive of a feature, but some of the criticisms of it are downright silly.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sound does accomplish part of the immersion thing pretty well. When you've got some okay headphones on, even with the teeny screen, you can hear the rumble of the rush on Akaba in Lawrence of Arabia. You just can't see the wide screen image.
And you're right, music you listen to in parallel with other stuff, whereas video you have to focus on, and those are different. It's hard to see the convergence of the iPod player and portable DVD players any time soon. You'd need some sort of projection screen...
Or alternatively, you can make the size of the screen completely irrelevant by just bringing it closer to your eyes. When some Jonathan Ives type cooks up "TV Glasses" that don't look as "stylish and comfortable" (and headache-inducing) as this, then we'll be getting someplace. For portable video, you just can't be wedded to the physical screen across the room the way we are now. You have to approach the problem from another angle.
Jobs pitched video as a little perk added in the update to the top-end iPods, and that was just about right.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
So I know I'm probably just addding to the other people on here that have already vented that portable TV is a thing of the past, and that the screen is too small, and that there's nothing good on anyway, etc... but obviously the OEMs and Service Providers don't realize this yet... It used to be cool to be able to pick up that TV signal anywhere and watch TV, but not only is it old hat, but why would I want to do that on a Cell Phone of all things? Think about it:
I'm at home, I watch the HDTV in the living room.
I'm in the Home Office, I have a TV tuner (that rarely gets used, but that's beside the point)
I'm on the go, there are DVD players and TV tuners for in car stereos (which have much better sound and typically are like 7" screens)
I'm in the office, there's a TV in the break room (besides, I'm too busy to watch TV at work anyway or I wouldn't have a job)
Why do we need another one? Are people standing around waiting in lines for the train? Is that the only market? I used to surf the net on my phone waiting for my plane when I traveled, but it was usually only for a few minutes to get the news because the screen was too darn small. How many people ride the train/plane/bus to work? I assume it's a decent number, but compare that to the number of people that can afford a phone that enables them to watch TV and how many actualy care to watch TV in the first place and then see how many are in all categories... then realize that we're talking about a small percentage of people here and realize that Cell phone TV = "Nothing to see here, move along"
Just my $0.02 I guess.
-=JML=-
This is what happens when gadgets become more appealing to non-gadget oriented people. When it's a social statement for everyone to have the latest and greatest thing, the features quickly become superficial in terms of their actual usefulness or quality. A cell phone that has a camera, takes videos, displays TV, plays music, and whatever else is all very cute, but they're only widespread because those features signify the latest and therefore the best in the public eye.
I'm not saying not to make these features in a gadget. But make a *quality* gadget that's not a cheap POS that was rushed out the door so the gotta-have-its can be the first to be seen with it.
I want my phone to be a phone. That's it. My job prohibits a camera phone. Which would be fine, if it wasn't for the fact that because of the current trend, a phone without a camera is automatically the cheapest quality phone available.
I just want a phone with a sharp screen, long battery life, voice dialing, and menus that don't have a half-second lag time behind button pushes. And that's it. And I can't manage to find one.
If I want a digital camera, I'll buy one. Same with a music player, video player, TV, or video camera. And no contracts, either.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Considering that the UK has DVB coverage in virtually every populated area (and it's unencrypted), it is a wonder that there is no phone that can tap into it. There might be issues with roaming around from area to area & reception, but even so a phone that offered unimpeded access to DVB would still kick 3Gs arse all over the shop. Later models would probably even be DVRs as well, either to a memory card or hard drive.
But such a device is unlikely to ever happen - at least as a subsidized offering. The telcos have spent billions on the lame duck called 3G and they're certainly not going to let their customers get something better for free.
Offtopic but I'll ask anyway, since the previous post prompted me to ask the question...
DVB-H, DVB-T...GSM, CDMA...110V/60Hz, 220V/50Hz...why does there always seem to be a slight yet significant difference in what should otherwise be a universal te3chnology when it comes to the North American and the rest of the world?
Two different types of digital broadcast television, so global electronics manufacturers have to build two different types of equipment or build in the capability to accept either one.
GSM, a GLOBAL standard for cellphone technology, yet the US is quite late to adopt it in favor of CDMA (coincidentally, patented by a US company, Qualcomm.) Granted that CDMA is superior in some respects (power requirements and bandwidth come to mind) but why be a telecommunications island?
Basic electricity...ok, most modern devices can accept 110 or 220 vac, 50 or 60 Hz, but again, why did it have to be different? 220 vac would make more sense, as the same amount of power can be delivered with less current and less heat loss, but 110 vac may be safer due to the lower voltage...
I fully admit that I don't have all the technical details, and probably live in my own utopian world where everybody has the same electricity and everybody can roam on anybody else's cellphone network without needing a phone capable of three or four different frequency bands, but sometimes I think that the differences are more political and territorial than technical. (US GSM at 1900 MHz where the rest of the world uses 900/1800 MHz?)
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?