Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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