May 11, 2005
Mobile TV tests cartoons and news
The UK's first trial of TV on mobiles will start with programmes ranging from music videos, to cartoons and news, reports the BBC.
"The trials by NTL Broadcast and 02 start in Oxford from July and will run for six months to test 16 channels.
All 350 testers will be able to see shows from the Discovery Channel, CNN, the Cartoon Network and a short-film channel called Shorts International.
The testers in Oxford will all use the Nokia 7710 handset. It is a widescreen multimedia smartphone, released earlier this year, which is able to receive digital TV signals.
DVB-H (digital video broadcast - handheld) is a standard which has been specifically developed for the broadcast of TV signals on mobiles and other handheld devices.
It lets mobiles, which have special requirements because of screen size and battery life, handle TV signals in real-time.
The DVB-H standard is currently being tested by US, Germany, France, Finland, Sweden and others. More trials expected to launch later in 2005 and throughout 2006.
But DVB-H is in competition with another mobile TV technology called Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB).
The Japanese, South Koreans and Ericsson of Sweden back DMB because they say the technology drain batteries even less and it handles more frames a second."
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