[opendtv] Mobile TV update from IBC

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:50:01 -0400

I think that the self-inflicted incompatibility problems, caused by a
gaggle of proprietary walled gardens trying to introduce mobile TV
broadcast to handheld devices, are clouding the issue. The implication
seems to be that without these problems, the service would be popular.
I'm still wondering whether the system works robustly enough and whether
it will be popular with kids.

Is the fact that 3Italia signed up 110,000 subscribers in the first 5
weeks, right at World Cup time, a trend, or is it just a blip?

Bert

------------------------------------
Incompatibility dogs mobile TV
Interoperability a concern as the first rollouts test waters

Junko Yoshida
(09/18/2006 9:00 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193001247

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - As mobile TV gears up in earnest, operators and
handset vendors are finally coming to grips with a slew of problems that
are impeding its uptake--including some of their own making. Among the
challenges cited here last week at IBC, Europe's largest broadcast
technology conference, are a persistent lack of interoperability,
quality-of-service issues and a nonexistent certification process for
any of the handful of competing mobile-TV standards.

Asked what the industry has learned from this summer's mobile-TV trials
and commercial rollouts throughout Europe, Paul Werp, business director
for mobile connectivity solutions at Texas Instruments Inc., said, "One
word: interoperability."

Indeed, the industry's two biggest unfulfilled needs are "rock-solid
interoperability" and "economy of scale," said Darragh Ballesty,
product-marketing manager for mobile digital TV products at Silicon &
Software Systems (S3), a Dublin, Ireland-based middleware supplier.

The IBC event also brought some good news, albeit spotty. The Italian
mobile operator 3Italia says it signed up 110,000 DVB-H subscribers in
just the first five weeks of mobile-TV operations this summer. Finland
has also started commercial mobile-TV services. And this fall, BT Movio
in the U.K. will roll out DMB-IP-based commercial digital TV and radio
services.

Qualcomm Inc., pushing its homegrown Forward-Link-Only (FLO) technology
for mobile TV, also disclosed at IBC that it's giving FLO away free to
CDMA phone manufacturers. The company has signed up Newport Media Inc.
as the first silicon vendor outside Qualcomm's own semiconductor
division to develop a FLO-based mobile-TV chip set.

Despite the flurry of activity in Europe, mobile-TV broadcast isn't
happening in the United States--at least not commercially as yet.
Eighteen months ago, many industry experts predicted that North America
would be the first region to implement mobile-TV broadcast services
based on the Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) standard. The key
to this prediction: Modeo, formerly Crown Castle, which owns 5 MHz of
spectrum in the 1,670- to 1,675-MHz range.

But Modeo has yet to sign up a single cellular operator to help start
mobile-TV broadcasts to its subscribers.

Qualcomm, in contrast, has made a deal with Verizon Wireless--the
largest cellular operator in the United States--as a FLO-based mobile-TV
distribution partner. Qualcomm's subsidiary MediaFLO USA is scheduled to
run its service across 6 MHz of bandwidth in the 700-MHz range, on UHF
channel 55. However, it's far from clear whether Qualcomm will be able
to make significant revenue from mobile TV during 2007.

The fledgling U.S. mobile-TV market has seen the emergence of yet
another player, HiWire Mobile. The company, scheduled for a DVB-H
broadcast trial this fall in Las Vegas, will operate in the 700-MHz
band, in MediaFLO territory.

Michael Schueppert, CEO at Modeo, acknowledged that "the largest U.S.
mobile operators are not yet as fully engaged with mobile TV as we would
like." The reason, Schueppert said, is "primarily because they
[operators] are waiting for the technology to mature and for nationwide
networks to be available."

Exactly how long all that will take is anybody's guess.

Even within a single standard like DVB-H, the fragmentation of
specifications--including different conditional-access systems,
different digital rights management (DRM) schemes and diverging feature
implementations--has become a nightmare for network operators. Many of
them can't find multiple sources for handsets that interoperate with
their choice of headends. That, in turn, makes them reluctant to commit
to commercial mobile-TV broadcast services. The fragmentation of
profiles is also discouraging, since phone makers cannot afford to keep
developing different handsets for every permutation of a given standard.

"There is no guaranteed interoperability at this stage," said Ulrich
Reimers, chairman of the DVB Project's Technical Module--especially when
Internet Protocol datacast protocol stacks are added on top of the DVB-H
standard. Too many operators, eager for the the first mover's advantage,
"have fiddled around with the implementations of IP datacasting, video
codec and service protection systems," said Reimers, a professor at the
Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. He acknowledged, however,
that "some moves in the industry [are] forcing operators to go back to
full standards compliancy."

Some blame Modeo for instigating a breach within the DVB-H community.
The company hastily adopted Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary DRM and
Windows Media codec a year ago, instead of the DRM and the H.264-based
video codec set forth by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). But many
industry observers pointed out last week, "Look where they are now."

"Modeo had to go off the road," said defender Adam Berger, the chief
technology officer at Penthera Technologies Inc. (Pittsburgh), a
developer of mobile-TV software for Modeo. That's because "the market
was already insanely fragmented, and the OMA's DRM wasn't ready when
Modeo needed it," he said.

But other industry observers said that by choosing HTC as its handset
partner, Modeo alienated the mobile-handset community. No handset maker
is willing to invest in the Modeo-specific mobile-TV network until Modeo
finds cellular partners.

Moreover, S3's Ballesty observed, as "operators look for the cheapest
cost-per-bit broadcast system to mobile phones, we see some of them
already swapping out their headend systems." Such moves send a panic
signal to handset vendors, forcing them to scramble to make their
handsets interoperate with a whole new headend system. While S3 hopes to
fill in the blanks for handset vendors with its middleware, the software
layers necessary to enable different services and networks are
exponentially growing.

Wanted: certification process

Traditionally, "self-certification" has been the modus operandi in TV
broadcasting. But mobility compels TV handsets to comply with a
telecommunication standard, making a much more rigorous validation and
certification process almost mandatory. Most handset vendors today that
can receive and decode just two mobile-TV video streams provided by an
operator declare themselves "interoperable."

In reality, how a mobile-TV device talks to a DVB-H network and to
servers in the mobile-TV service infrastructure is far more
complex-especially when IP-based downstream channels are added to the
architecture. Variables include ways to offer essential interactivities
such as service discovery and selection, service purchase and content
protection. "As a standard has a lot of options, you need to specify
profiles. You must decide which functions are needed, and how you will
use them," said Claus Sattler, executive director of the Broadcast
Mobile Convergence (BMCO) forum.

Looking at the current DVB-H market, full of players with different
approaches to implementing the standard, the DVB Project's Reimers
wonders,"Should I have put in place a certification process before
launching DVB-H?" His answer: "I don't know." Recalling the GSM launch
in Europe, which delayed GSM phone rollouts for a year while the
certification process was completed, Reimers said, "I am not sure we
could have afforded the delay of another year" in DVB-H. The lost time
might have given competing mobile-TV standards the chance to horn in.

Mission: Win Cingular

One saving grace for the mobile-TV industry is that key players are
coming together in an effort to determine implementation guidelines so
as to ensure DVB-H interoperability.

The BMCO forum in Europe has completed its mobile-TV profiles for DVB-H.
Similarly, in the United States, handset vendors and chip companies last
week disclosed a North American set of profiles for DVB-H-based mobile
TV, according to Yoram Solomon, director of strategic marketing and
industry relations for TI's mobile connectivity solutions group. Solomon
is also president of the Mobile DTV Alliance.

Some in the MDTV Alliance privately called the group's mission "to win
Cingular"--the second largest cellular operator in the United
States--for the DVB-H camp.

There is a persistent concern that sets of DVB-H profiles defined by
BMCO and the MDTV Alliance are diverging across the Atlantic. Solomon
said, however, that his group adopted as much of BMCO's version as it
could.

Beyond specific DRMs, copy protection schemes and content formats, the
profiles agreed upon by the MDTV Alliance include transmission
parameters, network and transport protocols, an interface to electronic
service guides, interactive channels, recording functions and device
management, among others.

Further, the MDTV Alliance hopes to accomplish something BMCO hasn't yet
pulled off--a certification process. Because the alliance is already
fragmented, with member Modeo diverging in its choice of a media codec,
DRM and service platforms, the U.S. group plans to develop a
"network-specific" interoperability certification test platform by
mid-December, Solomon promised.

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