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Bringing Free Television To Phones In America
ideonexus writes "South Korea, China, Brazil, parts of Europe, and Japan have been watching television on their phones for free since 2005, but American mobile carriers are struggling to offer clunky streaming video using Qualcomm's proprietary MediaFLO system for an additional monthly fee and excessive bandwidth demands. Now, with America having gone digital in June, if Mobile carriers were to have ATSC M/H (advanced television systems committee — mobile/handheld) television-tuner chips built into their handsets it sounds like we could enjoy free TV on our cell phones too; however, these companies have already invested a great deal of money adapting their networks to Qualcomm's format and Qualcomm is considering becoming a mobile television distributor itself."
Let's see... as non-cellphone devices, FLO TV costs $250 for the 7-inch LCD TV at Best Buy, and then you get 6 months free after which you pay about $15/month.
An ATSC-based portable LCD of the same size costs $100 at Best Buy, and of course has no monthly fees because ATSC is broadcast in the clear.
Now, the FLO TV product has an advantage because what you're paying for isn't just the broadcast networks, but also a few "basic cable" channels such as ESPN, CNN, CNBC, Nick, and Comedy Central. It's a case of you get what you pay for.
You must be watching AT&T Uverse.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
The places where this has worked have high population density and less personal space. A teenager can watch TV in their room without disturbing their parents. People can watch TV on public transport. That kind of thing. It is less attractive in countries with low population densities.
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South Korea, China, [...] and Japan
So all the countries that have excess Anime... Makes sense! Smaller file size and faster streaming after compressing the video to use only an 8 bit colour-stream, which hardly ruins the cartoon!
I'm kidding. Of course. Calm down.
Only because apple does not want to add it. Nokia phones have had FM radio WITH RDS forever.
Honestly, just because the iPhone does not have it does not mean that others dont have it, or have had it a long time already.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There's nothing worth watching.
What could possibly go wrong?
A mobile phone is a throw away cheap device
I still don't understand this mindset. A mobile phone, bought without a contract, is often upwards of a few hundred dollars here in America. Purchased with a contract, it comes at the price of about $50 with two years worth of monthly payments that you can't get out of without paying, you guessed it, a few hundred dollars. Nowhere in my book does that price put mobile phones in the range of cheap throw away devices. Cheap throw away devices are things like paper towels and flashlights that run under the $20 mark and are trivial to find and purchase just about anywhere. Something as expensive as a mobile phone seems to me like a long term investment. I put a lot of thought into what kind of phone I am going to purchase, what kind of capability it should have, and how much I am willing to pay for that capability. Mobile phone purchases require research and awareness and sometimes even a bit of silver-tongued bartering on the buyer's part. That doesn't seem like a throw away device to me.
I really wish this idea and similar ideas regarding things like computers and video game consoles would cease already. I am sick of having to save up for new multiple hundred dollar purchases every two or three new years because designers and companies refuse to design a product that lasts more than a couple years. That's not to say that I don't see value in upgrading for some new exciting feature. Sure, if a video game console provides a whole new interface or something cool like that, I won't have a problem dropping coin on it. Having to buy a new Xbox 360 every couple years just because a company won't put any money into quality engineer is frustrating though.
The same thing goes with mobile phones. If a company adds some cool new feature, like cameras, to their phone, I will drop coin on buying it if I value the feature. Paying to constantly replace a simple phone that I use primarily for texting or talking on every couple of years seems absurd however. This is especially true when I need to buy a new phone for no other reason than it has problems interfacing with a new battery or because the screen just magically 'wears out.'
I know that wasn't the point of your post, but I don't consider purchases of a few hundred dollars whimsical or cheap. I really wish tech companies would stop pushing these items on us like they were cheap throw away toilet paper to be replaced in a dozen months. I want something that lasts if I am going to buy it damn it. Hell, I am riding a 31 year old motorcycle that functions just fine today. I would be stoked if I could get mobile phone that could do the same....
On a side note, I can also use a land-line telephone that is 31 years old today. Our culture seems to have changed quite a bit when it comes to quality engineering.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Okay, not quite a tilt, but the pinball machine is being rocked quite a bit to get that comparison.
Plasma TVs are practically having a going out of business sale lately because California set energy standards for TVs at just below what plasma can do. As usually happens, when California regulates something, national distributors want one product they can take everywhere so the regulation becomes a de facto national standard.
MediaFLO isn't "clunky." The FLO part stands for "Forward Link Only." That means it uses a broadcast channel downstream, so it is bandwidth-efficient for one-way content delivery. It is a Qualcomm proprietary technology, but it is not inherently less good than other DTV technologies applicable to mobile devices. MediaFLO was designed for mobile devices, so it might have advantages over some DTV standards that were not designed with mobile devices in mind.
I wrote parts of this stuff
But you might miss important programs, like "Who wants to marry a minimum wage construction worker 17", "Surviver 39: Let's eat some live bugs and run around naked again", "Big Brother 26: Who cares any more", "Bachelor 45: Lets have sex with Russian mail order brides", and "Bachelorette 15: Women want to have indiscriminate sex too".
How could anyone not desire to see such revolutionary important and educational television programs as these?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"South Korea, China, Brazil, parts of Europe, and Japan have been watching television on their phones for free since 2005...
Er, I'm wondering how many of those countries have the numbers the US does, using these devices while attempting to steer 2 tons of steel down a freeway at 60MPH with 60,000 of their closest friends riding bumper to bumper? Somehow, I think the last thing we need is another visual distraction on a cell phone.
Perhaps this is one of those features that we don't go all Lemming over. Never really understood the fascination of browsing the web or watching video on a tiny-ass screen. The "because I can" cool factor usually wears off after about 20 minutes, or when you battery prematurely dies, whichever comes first.
I thought some have suggested this was a big reason why Flash has been ported to other platforms, but isn't on the iPhone. AT&T has publicly said it, but there are theories AT&T is terrified of what would happen to data usage if you could stream video to the iPhone via Flash from any number of sites.
Not to mention it would hurt iTunes video sales to the same devices.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
FM Radio, there is NO App for that.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
A mobile phone, bought without a contract, is often upwards of a few hundred dollars here in America.
Not with TracFone or Virgin.
decoding the broadcast ATSC signal takes a rather beefy CPU, so I wonder if decoding it (even in hardware) might not consume a lot of power for a cellphone.
Mobile reception of ATSC signals is difficult because of the larger antenna size required and because phase shifting of the signal and such can corrupt it, even at vehicle speeds. The only solution that makes sense is multicast OTA by the mobile provider. 288x352 @ 25 FPS, with a mono 22Khz audio can be reproduced at a decent quality at maybe 100KB/s, so 20 channels of broadcast TV on a mobile link would consume maybe 2MB/s, which is relatively low.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
In America, boradband providers only offer additional services if they can charge you for it. This "free" word you speak of will not be recognized by the American cell providers.
But it's not their call. If I buy a nokia ATSC enabled phone, and I tune to a local HD channel, I'll get television. Unless I buy the phone from a cell company who removes that functionality and renables it for a monthly fee, there's nothing they can do about it.
What a load of shit. Americans are getting shafted on mobile phones. Your plans are expensive, you pay to receive calls most if not all instances and your phones don't work with ever provider.
Just image if your TV and land line phone was like that or that houses had different electrical sockets depending on who built it.
Standards are not socialism, it's common fucking sense because as clearly proven by the mobile phone market in the US that a free market with no standards has left the US in an awful state.
You're not any more free in the US because you're letting mobile companies shaft you.
That is because mobile phones are one of the few things (along with healthcare) where Americans get a raw deal compared to the rest of the world.
Most things (rent, food, gadgets) are cheaper in the USA but it seems phones and healthcare are not.
The UK normally is an expensive country (gadgets cost twice the US price) but you can get a "pay as you go" phone (no contract) for £8.97 which is $14 - including tax and delivery.
So you can see why teenagers just throw one into the river and get a new one without thinking much about it.
God knows why phones are more expensive and so lacking in features over there in the USA - the healthcare is less of a mystery (from conversations I have had, USians are happy that their health care is overly expensive as long as that means that immigrants don't get treated).
I've heard enough from the peanut gallery now... The non-stop bickering about trivialities is getting pretty damn old, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Here's a lolipop, go away little children, and let the adults talk.
Is Europe, DVB-H had been promoted for literally decades as the thing that was going to change the world... EVERYTHING was going to have a TV on it, cell phones most of all.
Fast forward to the modern day, with cell phone manufacturers having disputes with broadcasters over DVB-H fees, one just went ahead and built a full DVB-T receiver into their cell phones. It was a stunning development. Sure, it used a bit more power, but now you could watch REAL TV programs, not just the niche "mobile" broadcasts that you were supposed to want to watch on your cell phone. Of course broadcasters were put in their place by this move, and DVB-H fees have become more reasonable, and there's an effort to get real content out there. But either way, the proverbial cat is out of the bag, and people now want "real TV" on their cell phones, and a large number of them get just that these days, for a fairly small premium...
Of course ATSC in the US is much more complex than DVB-T in Europe, but never the less, you certainly can still find a handheld TV for under $100 http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/541548/Digital-Prism-ATSC-300-3-5/
So, it's only a question of time. Give it another year, and your smart phones will receive OTA broadcasts, for free. Sure, they might also support the premium in-network TV-like data system, but nobody will want it, and the niche audience won't be large enough to support the effort. And it'll go the way of the MPEG-1 D-Frames, and the "PDA Internet", as do all poorly thought-out kludges that are only stop-gaps for temporarily resource-starved platforms that can't yet play with the big boys.
That is all. You may now return to your endless and pointless bickering about whether or not it's worthwhile to buy a subsidized cell phone...
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