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.'"

Comments

Broadcasting vs. Point-to-point efficiencies

[billstewart]

TV is inherently a broadcast medium - they're sending the one-way same signal out to millions of recipients. By contrast, voice/video over IP over cellphone-data is taking space on the radio channel for each individual recipient in two directions, even though hundreds of people may be watching the same content at the same time in the same radio cell. Makes a lot more sense to broadcast, if you can do it efficiently. From an IP perspective, it's possible to do multicast IP (though ISPs mostly don't see a business model for implementing it between carriers yet), but the scarce resource here is the radio channel.

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?

Re:Broadcasting vs. Point-to-point efficiencies

[hhghghghh]

They're using H.264 streams (MPEG 4 part 10) at stupidly low resolution. It's broadcast, not using the same cells as the cell network, but the same sort of arrangement as over the air HDTV, if not site sharing with those broadcasters.

Re:Broadcasting vs. Point-to-point efficiencies

[TheSync]

According to this press release, Crown Castle will be using Windows Media 9 aka SMPTE VC-1 as a codec with Windows Media 10 DRM. This article suggests that with 5 MHz using DVB-H with 16 QAM 2/3 modulation, you should get 9.2 Mbps, enough for 18 channels of 500 kbps video, and would be receivable by devices moving as fast as 150 kph without doppler fading.

Re:2 inches is not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Sports take a lot more bandwith when compared to news or something else that isn't under rapid movement. If the tuner is digital prepare for artifacts.

The mid air image technique has some problems with air, air has changing refraction index due to humidity and so on. CRT monitors have a vacuum to prevent that (think so, might be filled with some other gas). Imagine if you could just pump the air out of the buss and watch your game...

Already in the UK

[pryonic]

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...

Using DVB-H?

[daBass]

The article doesn't say it, but I would asume they are using DVB-H. (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld, as opposed to (T)errestrial, (S)atelite or (C)able)

Succesful trials with the technology are being done by O2 in the UK. In Oxford to be precise.

Actually not really much to do with cellphones

[angusr]

The technology that this article is presumably talking about is DVB-H - Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds. (As opposed to DVB-T - digital terrestrial, DVB-S - digital satellite or DVB-C - digital cable). DVB-H is basically a variant of DVB-T designed to be used in a "burst" mode - i.e. the hardware that the incoming DVB-H data is coming in on (which could be broadcast, or could be over IP via wireless, 3G, EDGE, GSM, etc) is powered up and a buffer is filled with enough data for a period of playback, then the reception hardware powers off while the buffer is emptied, and so on (not new for video over IP, but a fairly new idea for broadcast). It's mainly power saving. Definitely not purely for phones with tiny screens - imagine a Sony PSP, Nintendo DS or a Nokia 770 with DVB-H.

The DVB-H project homepage is at http://www.dvb-h-online.org/

Oops ...

[LaughingCoder]

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!

Re:mobile TV

[OpticalPaul]

Not having tried it out myself, and not having followed what is on offer in Europe, all I can suggest is asking them directly:

http://www.telusmobility.com/on/wweb/mobile_tv_faq s.shtml
http://www.bell.ca/shop/PrsShpWlsFnsGnd_Mobitv.pag e