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Philips Launching TV on Cellular in the US
An anonymous reader writes "News.com is reporting that Philips plans to soon bring the TV-on-cellular chipset to the US. TV enabled phones should be hitting the stores sometime in 2006 and to ensure that they meet their goal, Philips has partnered with Crown Castle Mobile Media to help make it happen. From the article: 'The company announced a similar chipset--which consists of a TV tuner, a decoder and peripheral components--for the European market earlier in the year. Three out of the six largest handset makers are currently building phones containing the chip for trials that will likely start soon. [...] The U.S. chipset is essentially the same product. "It is a small shift in the frequency band. The rest is all the same," Kaat said.'"
So does this mean the directors will now be instructed to zoom in more on the product (coke can, etc) since the screen is so tiny?
Excellent. This will make "throwing out your tv" so much easier.
I have a portable hand-held TV from 1991, and the screen is about 2" diag. It's not big enough to see anything, and I used to get nauseous tryng to view TV on it. The screen is about the same as that on my current mobile, so unless they're planning to make these things about 10" wide it's not going to work for me.
I'd rather get a USB HDTV decoder and run it off the laptop. Not very portable, compared to a mobile, but watchable all the same.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
WOW. What a silly way to work around the GREEDY GSM PROVIDERS! If 3G/EDGE traffic is expensive in your country, you shouldn't be inventing and pushing new technology, you should be pushing down the 3G/EDGE traffic prices to the same level as in different countries. I have unlimited 3G/EDGE/GPRS here for a flat fee of 10e/month. I can watch TV broadcasts over 3G. What does this new technology bring (in 2006) that I don't already have?
Its like going a step backwards. When its possible to send Audio/Video using IP based technology what's the point of stepping backwards.
I lost my signature... help!
And then TiVo will announce a device which allows you to timeshift TV shows on your Phone.
But the radio bandwidth choices seem odd. They've supposedly got 5 MHz across their target market (both North America and Europe), which is approximately one analog TV channel. How many programs do they plan to carry? Does using a cellphone-sized screen mean the resolution is enough lower than current US TV that they can cram a lot of channels in it, or are they only getting ~4 channels like conventional Low-Def Digital TV? If they're getting a bunch of channels of even-lower-def TV, are they broadcasting the same material everywhere, or doing some kind of cellular system that lets them (say) send the top 10 channels that the listeners in that cell want right now?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why would I watch TV on a small screen?
The only situation I can think of is when commuting by public transport. Also, the content must be of a high quality and not just some local TV station's news. Watching sport is probably ok.
But the screen is still way too small. I wonder if it is possible to design a system which transmits two beams of light which are invisible until they cross in the air. Then by some magical interference they create colour. If you can move the beams very rapidly (much like a normal CRT does) then you can create an image in mid-air.
Any thoughts?
when will they realize that people don't want to play games or watch tv on cell phones and that more importantly corporations don't want people losing productivity on company paid cellure time playing mario and the like.
just my two grams.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
I believe that broadcast has changed forever with the arrival of TiVo. I think that this has to be considered as an architectural constraint more than a future development for TV in the cell phones.
Looks like someone has analog nostalgia at Philips... why go backwards? While lots of companies are working on streaming video content through GPRS/3G/whatever, a TV tuner which will have problems with reception (like, in the underground?) and combined with a tiny screen... I wouldnt personally buy one of these
http://www.automatiq.se
This has already been launched in the UK by a couple of telcos, Vodafone being the first one I can name. It seems it's free for the first few months, then various packages of channels are available between £2.50 and £5 a month which isn't excessive. Not heard any glowing reviews, not nothing terrible either. I just couldn't watch TV on such a small screen...
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Succesful trials with the technology are being done by O2 in the UK. In Oxford to be precise.
i don't know about you, but whenever i have enough time to sit down and watch a TV show or even a 6 minute snippet from a TV show, i will do so using an actual television.
any place where i'm on the go where i would need to use a cell phone to watch TV would be a place where I don't really need to be watching TV anyways.
and don't we all watch too much TV as it is?
The DVB-H project homepage is at http://www.dvb-h-online.org/
When was the last time you were able to pick out the words etc. written on products / scenery on a small screen, let alone a tiny cellphone one? Frankly, normal TV would be mostly unwatchable on a standard cellphone screen, movies certainly would. On the other hand, at least it means the end of in-program brand placement, as you'll be unable to read what the product is (the exception here being the movie `I,robot`, so stuffed full of placement that you can't miss it, especially when it's audibly spoken at every opportunity)
~HTP~ Hug that tux
I'm not one of the militant anti-tv types that you see every once in a while, but do people really need this?
It's been a few years since I've actually had cable tv or any sort of antenna hooked up to watch tv. There are a few shows I have on DVD, but by and large I do not really watch TV. What gets me since I've more or less stopped watching TV is how much of it most people really watch- the fact is that most of the people I know come home from work every day and watch TV until it's time for bed, and spend the better parts of their weekends also watching TV. At school I cannot sit down in the common area and have a conversation with a friend between classes because the two tvs at either end of the room are always blaring, each with dozens of people sitting around them zoning out until it's time for their next class. I was eating pizza the other day at a small pizza shop, and there were several couples and families all sitting around not talking, but watching the big tv in the corner. When I visit with family members conversations are always broken up into 5 minute segments during commercials, so they don't miss any TV.
It's not even as though most people I talk to really enjoy what they watch most of the time- usually when the conversation turns to something about TV it's how poor the programming is, how many reruns there are, etc. TV is like this big vortex of suck that attracts peoples attention even if they are not enjoying what's on. I know that if I'm in a room with a TV going, and I do not have anything else specifically on my mind, my attention is invariably drawn to the TV- even if it's something on I distain (luckily, after a few years without TV I can simply get up and walk out of the room instead of being mezmerize d by the flickering box).
All this just makes me wonder, do people really need, or even want, to have constant access to television? What will happen if these become ubiquitous and everyone has access to a TV all the time? I'm not saying the technology is bad, just that there may be consequences of it that go unseen because everyone is looking at their 2" television screen.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Now, is there anything good on the Phone?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You and the parent poster are probably rich folks who do not have to commute by public transportation many hours a day (one person I know stays 6 ho/day on the commuting bus.) I don't know in your town, but people in the bus down here are not the best conversationists.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
One might question their timing ...
...
If you're the owner of one of the 80 million non-cable, non-digital TV sets in the U.S., you're running out of time: according to consumer advocates, when the government gives the OK to shut off all analog broadcasts -- possibly by January 1, 2009
Source: http://hdtv.engadget.com/entry/1234000027048954/
They might have these widely deployed just in time for the analog broadcasts to go dark. Hey look at me, I'm watching static on my cell phone!
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Perhaps this is where the sidekick/PDA comes into it's own, they're naturally suited to this sort of application and you can get broadband internet connected to them to reduce download times somewhat (and a fixed monthly payment reduces overall charges). The only cost after that is the cost of streaming the TV show, placed on by philips (or whoever will actually be streaming the shows)
~HTP~ Hug that tux
Bell and/or Telus are pushing TV phones this Christmas.
Seriously, have you noticed that people don't even know how to share a flight of stairs or a sidewalk when they are yapping on their phones, they'll just bump right into you if you don't jump out of their way? Imagine what happens when you add moving pictures to the mix?
We need this, we really need this.
If you build it, they will come...
This has been around for some time...putting tv on the phone is in response to carriers demand for new revenue streams not from consumers saying they need it or, want to pay a premium to watch something on a very small screen. The pitch up here is you can watch the Hockey game from where ever you are...I'd just walk into a sports bar...Big Screen and Cold beer if I really needed to watch a game. Why would I pay a premium for a diminished viewing experience?
corporations pay for most cell phones (with money they steal from people, of course)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
for SUV drivers. I can hardly wait to watch TV on my cell phone as I cruise through Los Angeles traffic in my Ford Klansman.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
We have some publicity about this product here in Canada / Québec. This kind of product dosn't looks good, small image et not really smooth. It looks like to run at about 10fps not interlased when standard tv run at 29.97 fps interlased. /make some sports... it'll be something good for your ass and for our medical system!
Can you take a break of TV sometimes and get up
That is a typical rich-person answer. /month; she has a fully-paid-for house in a neighbouring small town.
The woman I mentined earns US$ 300
* Her house is at least 10x cheaper than an equivalent house anywhere near the city (meaning, she can't just sell her house and try to move);
* her salary is not enough to eat, feed her son and pay for rent in the city;
* there are no equivalent employment opportunities in her town;
* she does not have enough money to go away from the country.
Now, it does not seem that simple, does it?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
the majority of ownage is private, the majority of usage is probably corporate...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Is this for analog TV in Europe? If so: they're late. The Dutch public channels will be off the air in analog format starting January 1st, 2006...
She works 8am - 5pm, monday - friday, and stays with her kid only on weekends.
Neither option you gave (find a different job, house, giving up her kid) is really an option.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
But in two-three years, tv phones will probably be kind-of-cheap. How much does the TV capability costs? US$ five? ten?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I've actually seen a MediaFLO handset... and the TV quality actually looks really, really good. Suprisingly good. And the handset I saw had 3 hours of battery life while watching TV. Channel switching times are on par with my DirecTV.
I think both DVB-H and MediaFLO transmit at 30fps @ QVGA. QVGA is about the same size as CIF/D1, which is very passable TV resolution. QVGA screens are also becoming more common on handsets. And, if you think about it, a 3" diagonal screen at book distance (let's say, 18 inches) is similar to a 40" TV across the room (at, say, 20 feet away).. not a huge TV (I have a projector) but not unuseable.
I read somewhere that MediaFLO was coming to verizon next year!
Cell phones are getting higher quality video playback *and* video recording. In a couple of years, your average cell phone will be a passable digital camera and digital video recorder. What I think is interesting is the formatting. Most phones have their screens oriented vertically... I wonder if in five years we will see more content in "tallscreen" instead of "widescreen" as people use their phones for more and more media...
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Move to a different city and/or get a different job. There is more than one, ya know. NO, THERE IS NOT. That was the point of my post.
Seems quite simple to me. Like basic economics and stuff. Unless you do enjoy those bus rides. Lucky you weren't born poor.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The headline is misleading. This is not "TV on cellular". This is DVB-H technology, and the whole point of DVB-H is that it's NOT over the cellular network.
Sending content like *live* TV over cellular networks is horribly inefficient, because it's not a broadcast medium. Every data connection on a cellular network is 1-to-1 (even with 3G), so three people on the same tower watching the same live TV show would use 3x the bandwidth. Not cool, especially for something as bandwidth-intensive as high-quality video. If watching live TV over 3G networks ever took off that way, the shiny new 3G networks would simply grind to a halt. That's why Verizon's much-vaunted VCast service does NOT include *live* TV.
That's why for *live* TV, the carriers are all turning to technologies like this (DVB-H) that actually *broadcast* live TV streams in separate spectrum so it doesn't clog the 3G networks. It's vastly more efficient.
It's already been said above that people will bumble around, walking into others while viewing their phones. No doubt those who drive while talking on the phone will be even more deadly, once they divert more attention to WATCHING their phones.
But let's be (unbelievably) optimistic for a moment, and assume that people will actually be responsible enough to not get into trouble while watching their phones. What other ramifications would there be?
Phones with TV is a BAD idea. But there's money to be made, so what else could be important?
Belo Horizonte, Brasil:
4.000.000 people population metropolitan region, 500.000 unemployed.
minimum wage: US$ 150 / month ($1/hour or less) -- that is the standard salary of 1.000.000 people (janitors, construction workers, etc): she is kind of priviledged, earning twice the minimum wage (she is approximately in Q3 on the general population income [meaning she earns more than 3.000.000 people in the same metro area]). Minimum wage workers normally live in the "favelas" [slums], or even further away in the outskirts of the metropolitan region.
Her routine does not give her plenty of time to study.
If she tries another job she either (a) won't find any or (b) will find a worse-paid job.
Now, going to the subject: a Nokia 1100 phone costs US$ 15 for a pre-paid plan. If the same phone with digital TV tuner costs US$ 40 (some year or two from now), she can afford it and entertain herself on her way home (our "novelas" [soap operas] are quite good, and are sold to lots of foreign countries)
Got it?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Oh great. That's all we need. Yet another thing to distract people while they drive.
Several times per week on my suburban commute, I'll have to take evasive action to keep from getting creamed by some asshole driving and yapping on the phone, text messaging, playing with their GPS, radar detector or stereo, putting on lipstick or mascara, shaving, trimming nails, reading the newspaper or a magazine, eating, rubbernecking an accident on the other side of the interstate, breast feeding, kissing, fellating, fucking, or any combination of the above.
I mean, who the hell does everybody talk to at 6:30 in the morning?
Now we get to add watching TV on a 1.5-inch screen to the list. Yay.
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
I love how you got all those people to respond to your post.
Finish off the joke and tell them you made it all up (because you did, and it's amazingly obvious).
Good one.
By the way 300 a month? You need to get out more, that's what gave your lie away (but there was a ton of other stuff too).
Check your search results; the "Slash" in this site's name probably threw off your query for a good bondage site. We understand, it happens...even to the most literate perverts.
damaged by dogma
You like to make jokes about pedestrians and drivers of single-family vehicles, but public transport is a lot more usable and a lot more used in some areas than in others. That is, some major cities have trains and/or buses that don't suck.
Why would I pay a premium for a diminished viewing experience?
Because you are in college, and your parents are paying for your cellphone. Roughly two-thirds of all college students are under 21, which is the legal age for admittance to sports bars in many jurisdictions.
and take your head out of your burgeoise way of thinking that the whole world is the US of A. The minimum wage down here is US$ 150/month (it used to be less than US$ 100/month, but the US dollar took a HUGE hit during this year.)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I normally go ballistic when people call BS on me (I'm not a BS kind of guy...)
But this should settle the issue. US$ 1 = R$ (BRL) 2.20, for reference.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Yeah let's watch tv... let's download movies.... let's have email.... But what about the main feature a phone was created for? To fucking talk? I don't know about you guys, but I'd like to be able to have a flawless conversation on my phone before I want to download games and fucking annoying ringtones. Just a thought... I'd pay extra for a phone I could talk on anywhere anytime. This dropped calls/ choppy call bullshit needs to be fixed first. It's like putting a radio in a car with square wheels. You can listen to the radio, but the car is useless for transportation.
check the facts before calling other people liars then? /. -- and yes, I did by mistake assume people know I'm not from the USofA because: I don't have an Anglo-saxon name; nor is my name an obvious alias (like CmdrTaco or LikiSkywalker); /. is not completely US-centric; I assumed people, reading my post, would care to read other posts of mine to see what I have to say in general (I do that a lot -- for instance, I know that you have a quite definite tendency of calling people liars) -- and I mention a lot that I'm from Brasil, that I lived for a year in Europe, that I am a public employee, 35, etc.
/. in account in every post on this subthread, aggravated by the fact that I normally state monetary values in US dollars. No, I don't lie on /. ... I even post under my real-life name, although abbreviated.
It's more or less the same argument, and here it goes:
I post quite a lot on
AND, to boot, I gave the salary in US$ because it's the only currency people all over the world know more or less how much represents without having to search.
Do you get the idea? People shouldn't have to search for nothing if they would accept my word for it; but they _do_ have to search for stuff if they want to debunk me. Notwithstanding that, I posted (in this same subthread, the "Again:" post I mentioned) a lot of info, and I quote:
"""
Belo Horizonte, Brasil:
4.000.000 people population metropolitan region, 500.000 unemployed adults.
minimum wage: US$ 150 / month ($1/hour or less) -- that is the standard salary of 1.000.000 people (janitors, construction workers, our equivalent of "burger flippers", etc): she is kind of priviledged, earning twice the minimum wage (she is approximately in estatistical Q3 on the general population income [meaning she earns more than 3.000.000 people in the same metro area]). Minimum wage workers normally live in the "favelas" [slums], or even further away in the rural outskirts of the metropolitan region.
Her routine does not give her plenty of time to study.
If she tries another job she either (a) won't find any or (b) will find a worse-paid job.
Now, going to the subject: a Nokia 1100 phone costs (in stores here in Belo Horizonte) US$ 15 for a pre-paid plan. If the same phone with digital TV tuner costs US$ 40 (some year or two from now), she can afford it and entertain herself on her way home (our "novelas" [soap operas] are quite good, and are sold to lots of foreign countries)
"""
To which I'd add: "education on the bus, knitting, etc, are not really options because said person is already tired with her arduous routine."
To be fair, said post was an answer to an AC, and if you read it with threshold >= 0, it disappeared....
So, to close this subject: Yes, I apologize for not taking US-centrism of
Ok?
HTH,
Humberto Massa
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"check the facts before calling other people liars then?"
Ok, fine, I STILL think you're lying, and what facts should I chech asshole?
YOU DIDN'T GIVE THE COUNTRY CUNT, so the only facts I had were what you gave.
Give us useful information and maybe you'll avoid being called a liar.
Even though you are.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I didn't get the country? He, he.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048