That’s the question the BBC Trust is posing, after the recent end of the Beeb’s 12-month trial of streaming mobile TV. The Trust suggests that there’s confusion among mobile users about why the BBC’s channels aren’t available alongside their commercial rivals on mobile. However, here’s the weird thing: people weren’t exactly falling over themselves to watch the corporation’s channels during that year-long trial. In fact, it seems that usage peaked at a lowly 580 views last June, with an average of just 13 minutes a month. The figures will be more ammunition for people who think mobile TV is dead in the water - at least over 3G. I can’t help thinking that 3G simulcasts simply aren’t appealing to mobile users - who might be much more interested in specially packaged mobile downloads (say, a three-minute catch-up of last night’s Eastenders). But what do you think?
Tag Archive for 'Mobile TV'
I’m at the BREW 2008 show in San Diego, where tech firm Qualcomm is outlining its plans and strategy, as well as some new services.
However, one of the most intriguing came from the company’s Len Lauer, EVP and Group President at Qualcomm. He said the company is keen to put its MediaFLO mobile TV platform in devices other than mobile handsets.
“Why shouldn’t you buy a PMP and also have that capability,” he asked, on-stage during the keynote address. So you’d buy an iPod-like device, and it’d be able to receive live digital TV as well as play your videos - as long as you were in a country with a working MediaFLO network, of course.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm is keen to move MediaFLO beyond pure live TV, adding in things like interactivity and Sky+ style pausing.
“Maybe I’m watching a show and a hot actress comes on, and I want to pause it and find out about her background and lifestyle,” he said (that sounds more creepy in print than it did on-stage). Another app might be sports, where you could pause a match to check the stats of someone who’s just come on as a substitute.
Intriguing stuff, especially if Qualcomm launches MediaFLO in the UK, as is currently rumoured. Meanwhile, Lauer also said the tech could be used to deliver original video content from social networks and sites like YouTube in the future.
Let’s be honest: mobile TV hasn’t exactly set the world alight. The reasons are many: the operator services are often a bit shonky even over 3G; non-operator services are pointless if you’re not on a flat-rate data tariff; regulators and technology firms are squabbling over which formats should be used for digital mobile TV here in Europe; and too many broadcasters assume mobile TV means merely simulcasting what’s on the actual telly.
And that’s just a few of ‘em. Anyway, it seems Nokia is under no illusions about the growth (or otherwise) of the sector. “It’s a bit in a turmoil,” said Nokia’s Niklas Savander last week, at an industry conference. “We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads. Rollout is slower than we anticipated a couple of years ago.”
Personally, I think he’s on the money with the ‘downloads’ thing. Surely people are most likely to want to use their phones to catch up on stuff they missed at home - time AND place-shifting their TV viewing. And perhaps in the future, they’ll watch more made-for-mobile shows too. But both of those point to downloads rather than live streaming.
Nokia is keen to push the DVB-H standard for digital broadcasting, but perhaps it should be shifting its attention towards making a service that does for TV shows what its Nokia Music Store does for music…
ITV is launching a new made for mobile TV series on Monday on ITV Mobile, and then on ITV.com’s entertainment channel a week later. The show, the Gym, is a comedy effort starring Might Boosh actor Rich Fuller (Bob Fossil), and Channel 4’s Plus One actress Ingrid Oliver.
The ‘mobicom’ (ITV’s word, not ours) will be comprised of 50 two-minute episodes making it the perfect rib-tickling snippet you can devour on the bus. The Gym is arriving hot on the heals of ITV’s first made-for-mobile TV effort, Hot Desk, a celebrity interview show. Presumably there will be more of this sort of content from ITV to follow.
(Via mocoNews)
Motorola has fired a broadside at Nokia’s DVB-H mobile TV products with its own Mobile TV DH01 ‘personal media player’.
DVB-H is the EU-backed mobile TV standard and Motorola’s DH01 will be compatible with it. Like Nokia when it launched DVB-H products, Motorola’s first device (to be unveiled at the CES show in Las Vegas) won’t be a mobile phone.
Motorola’s DH01 will be a paperback-sized device with a 4.3-inch screen supporting up to 16 million colours, and running at 25fps. It also has Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard support capable of storing 90 minutes of TV video on a 256MB card. And you don’t have to worry about running out of juice as the DH01 has four hours of playback time.
As a bonus, to get round that annoying lag in images you get with most mobile TV services as the streaming is buffered, Motorola’s solution will offer a five-minute memory buffer.
