December 12, 2004
Cellphones spell the end for pocket TVs
Snowy pictures and hissy sound have been the hallmark of pocket TVs since they were launched more than 15 years ago. But the quality of TV picture available to people on the move is in for a sea change, according to New Scientist.
"From 2006, mobile phones will be offering crisp, clear TV pictures. But the pictures will not be coming over the cellphone network - they will be sent from transmitters already used for TV broadcasts. And this means a completely new breed of phones will be necessary to pick them up.
[..] With cellphone bandwidth so expensive, operators need another way to transmit their pictures. Which is why the cellphone industry has been working on a number of ways to deliver live TV to phones via digital signals broadcast from existing TV transmitters.
The most promising scheme, called Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H), was last week chosen by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as the standard for Europe. DVB-H is based on the successful digital terrestrial TV system that delivers the UK's 30-channel Freeview digital TV service.
In the UK, the mobile network O2 will start using DVB-H next year, despite having paid £4 billion for a 3G licence in April 2000.
O2 plans to give prototype Nokia TV phones to 500 of its subscribers to test.
Unless severe problems emerge in the trials now under way in the US and Europe, the momentum behind DVB-H seems unstoppable. Motorola, NEC, Siemens, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia, O2 and NTL expect to kick off DVB-H services in 2006.
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