Cell Phone TVs Catching On

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3880069.stm' target='_blank'>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3880069.stm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"With mobiles starting to dominate our daily lives, there is growing interest in the idea of TV on the phone. Mobile TV has been tried before, never with much success. There is the problem of getting decent reception while you are on the move, let alone the issue of battery life and watching programmes on a tiny screen."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/CELLTV.JPG" /><br /><br />I had first heard about cellphone TVs when Samsung released the first such model about three years ago. This article talks about the fact that more and more people are interested in this technology; however, poor battery performance in such devices are proving to be the biggest hurdle. One of the ways to tackle this problem is called a method called time-slicing, which means that the receiver is not on all the time. The other hurdle is the prohibitive cost of the TV service for cell phones with can cost over $1 per minute of watched content. Hmm, it would still be interesting to try it out. Does anyone own a cell phone TV yet?

[dean_shan]

Dang that's expensive. You'd end up forking over $50 bucks just to watch one show. You could get a month of satellite for one small show on a small screen with poor sound.

[Filip Norrgard]

It is only me, or does the BBC mention 3 different ways of watching TV on the cellphone: Streaming thru 3G network
Streaming thru 2G network using GPRS (or EDGE, 2.5G)
Terrestial one-way broadcasting using DVB-H
(In the order mentioned in the article.) They don't go much into the details of the streaming techniques, which is a bit shame...
In Europe, trials in Berlin and Helsinki are using existing terrestrial TV masts to broadcast compressed signals to handsets with additional receivers.
Oh, so that's where they are testing a mobile digital TV standard, DVB-H. It's a shame that Nokia didn't release [rul=http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html?orig=/phones/7700]the 7700[/url] for regular consumers, but only companies that are pilot testers, as I would have liked to try out this new way of looking at TV. ;) People were actually waiting for that model here, just because it boasted something as cool as add-on digital TV. But, I have to admit that sidetalking wouldn't have been as cool. :?

So, it seems like the only way I'm going to see TV on my phone and/or Pocket PC is by streaming it from my own computer...

Dang that's expensive. You'd end up forking over $50 bucks just to watch one show. You could get a month of satellite for one small show on a small screen with poor sound.
Straight on! I wouldn't like to pay that much for watching TV. :x DVB-H sounds better in the way that it shouldn't render any costs for viewing -- well, not counting battery life naturally -- since it is broadcast in the same free-for-all way as regular terrestrial analog broadcasts. :) (Or, so I've learned)