[opendtv] Mobile TV is BACK: Ericsson launches broadcast video for 4G

From: "TLM" <TLM@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Opendtv" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:05:03 -0800
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/25/broadcast_tv_yet_again/

 

Mobile TV is BACK: Ericsson launches broadcast video for 4G

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Must-watch TV - literally: NO pausing, skipping or stopping

By
<http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2013/02/25/broadcast
_tv_yet_again/> Bill Ray .
<http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Bill%20Ray> Get more from this
author

Posted in MWC <http://www.theregister.co.uk/networks/mwc/> , 25th February
2013 15:04 GMT <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/25/> 

MWC 2013 Broadcast mobile TV is back again, this time on Verizon's 4G
network with better quality than ever, because it's obviously merely
inferior technology which has prevented the success of mobile broadcasting
in the past.

Ericsson is going large at Mobile World Congress. It is now the largest
provider of mobile infrastructure whose kit handles world's LTE traffic,
plus O2 has forgiven its past failures and awarded Ericsson the contract to
run the UK's core network across the generations. The company is also
demonstrating that it can route mobile calls right into a web browser with
WebRTC... But what really caught El Reg's eye was the announcement that
Verizon would be using Ericsson's eMBMS technology to deploy broadcast video
in the USA later this year, and Telstra is going to give it a shot Down
Under too.

That's "broadcast" video - where everyone watches the same thing at the same
time without the pause/rewind/skip one gets watching mobile video on
YouTube, or iPlayer or any of the other video-on-demand services. But
Verizon and Ericsson reckon mobile users will forgo the convenience of being
able to control playback for the increased network efficiency made possible
by Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service.

eMBMS is a nice technology, just as MBMS was a nice technology when it was
applied to 3G networks. The broadcast system uses existing cellular
infrastructure, and radio frequencies, but broadcasts the same signal to any
number of people. This makes it much more efficient - as long as lots of
people want to download the same content at the same time. It's also very
attractive to network operators, who know video is popular and whose
networks struggle to provide it. The Ericsson press release on the matter
points out that 67 per cent of consumers watch TV on a mobile or tablet, but
is silent on the matter of how many would choose to do so if they couldn't
select what to watch.

A number of operators tried MBMS on 3G networks, but discovered that the
vast majority of viewing took place in the home - largely from the
teenager's bedroom - where Wi-Fi provides a better solution, but Ericsson is
hoping that technology will provide a more compelling proposition for
Verizon's planned launch.

That launch will be later this year, and revolves around sporting events and
concerts. That's time-critical content which will certainly need the
bandwidth available to the 4G-based eMBMS, along with the greater
compression that H.265
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/29/h265_signed_off_by_itu/>  (aka
HEVC, High Efficiency Video Coding) can offer and the adaptive capabilities
of MPEG DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) which can modify
encoding to suit the available bandwidth, all of which makes for terribly
impressive demonstrations and will make for good video should anyone sign up
to watch.

But the product echoes the mistakes that were made following the launch of
3G: just because something is technically possible doesn't mean anyone will
want it. Broadcasting television to mobile telephones has been tried, and
tried again, eating through millions of dollars and pushing the technical
development to almost universal indifference from consumers who just want
NetFlix to work properly. R
[opendtv] Mobile TV is BACK: Ericsson launches broadcast video for 4G

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