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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.
> 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.
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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...
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.
I have never understood the appeal of those portable DVD players
They are invaluable for long car trips with children. Listening to Spongebob for 6 hours is better than listening to "are we there yet" for 6 hours.
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
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?