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

Product Placement

[elronxenu]

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?

Tichy

[Spacejock]

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.

mobile TV

[dnaumov]

"A few years ago, many looked at TV-on-cell technology as an expensive oddity. TV service began in South Korea in 2002, but the TV signal came over the cellular network, resulting in massive phone bills. Since then, cell phone makers have decided to integrate TV tuners into handsets. Service providers still charge consumers for delivering content, but overall, it's much cheaper."

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?

Why a TV Tuner?

[Vivek Jishtu]

Its like going a step backwards. When its possible to send Audio/Video using IP based technology what's the point of stepping backwards.

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.

2 inches is not enough

[hedleyroos]

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?

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/

Re:Detail levels

[leonmergen]

As a matter of fact, these types of mobiles with TV on them are already quite popular over here (in .nl) and I must say, for things like the news and such, it works pretty well... good sound, a good quality video stream and well, yeah, the screen might be a bit tiny but you sure as hell can see what's going on (a friend of mine owns such a mobile)...

The only bad side about this is the cost - it's simply not worth the money (yet) to watch the news over your mobile. You can just as well call your auntie, ask what was on the news, ask her how she's doing, have a good discussion and then hangup and you'll still be off cheaper than watching the news for a few minutes...