[opendtv] New mission: Adding digital TV to every portable screen
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:03:10 -0400
From everything I've read in the past many years, I can't help but
believe that mobile TV might work okay ONLY IF it can be made part of
the standard OTA TV transmission package. It just seems like anytime
people try to create a separate network just for mobile reception, it
just doesn't hold its own. One wonders how many times this has to be
repeated before th hype subsides.
If it's true that TV to cell phones isn't the only or best way to offer
mobile TV, then that makes it even more viable to improve the receivers
and use the standard OTA signal.
Bert
-----------------------------------------------
New mission: Adding digital TV to every portable screen
Junko Yoshida
(09/11/2008 4:08 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210600981
AMSTERDAM - If you still think that mobile TV is designed for cell
phones, you're stuck in the Stone Age.
While still hopeful for massive mobile phone design wins, mobile TV chip
suppliers have already moved on, looking elsewhere for potential homes
for their products -- especially outside the cellular phone realm where
too many stakeholders are gridlocked and the technology stagnant. ( see:
Dying is easy, mobile TV is hard )
New design-in opportunities range from digital photo frames, boon boxes
and MP3 players to notebooks and portable navigation systems, according
to Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano Mobile Silicon.
AvMap's Geosat 6 Phone TV, based on Siano's leading mobile TV receiver
and antenna chips, offers mobile TV, advanced GPS navigation, a tri-band
GSM phone, alcohol test and multimedia player functions. It will be
outfitted in Peugeot sports cars.
Although each of these new opportunities will never represent a design
socket as huge as that of mobile handsets, Ironi said, "Our vision is
mobile TV everywhere. Every portable device featuring an LCD screen
should have a digital TV."
Cynics, beware. Dismissing Ironi's "TV everywhere" tagline as just "new
spin" for mobile TV understates the potential. Siano, a private company
whose financial figures are not publicly available, is expecting the
company's sales to "grow by seven times this year over the previous
year," claimed Siano's CEO.
Ironi attributes this growth to a large number of a variety of consumer
electronics devices. "Mobile digital TV is getting broadly into
different types of infotainment devices," he said.
Siano is disclosing this week at the IBC convention here several new
customer products. They include: A Motorola-branded video-touch personal
TV media player offering GPS capabilities and DVB-H mobile TV receiver;
a GPS and DVB-T combo device by CoShip, China's largest manufacturer of
digital TV; an in-car device called Geosat 6 Phone TV, developed by
AvMap, which will be outfitted in Peugeot sports cars; and Hauppauge's
new USB "mini stick" offering DVB-T-based digital TV service.
Siano's CEO noted that such consumer portable products all share
"practically the same size and the same features." The underlying
threads linking these mobile devices are similar, he said, which makes
it easy to integrate mobile TV.
Siano's scorecard on mobile TV standards
While chasing C.E. design wins, Ironi is also keeping a watchful eye on
the global mobile phone market. He traces mobile TV phone market trends
by ranking the hottest mobile TV standards "most likely to create a
growth opportunity for Siano."
Keeping such a score is important for Siano, a developer of mobile TV
chips capable of demodulating multiple standards in different
geographical areas throughout the world.
Ironi's latest scorecard pegs DVB-T, terrestrial digital TV standard in
Europe, as the number-one growth opportunity for Siano.
China's CMMB, however, is moving up fast on DVB-T growth, said Ironi. "I
am very surprised with the speed of uptake on CMMB in China," he said.
Ironi's ranking follows with Korea's T-DMB and Japan's ISDB-T. The most
disturbing trend is that DVB-H is continuing to trail. "Unless DVB-H
makes it big-time either in the first or second quarter in 2009, I think
DVB-T will take over," said Ironi.
In the U.S. mobile TV market, Ironi said, "I watch carefully all three "
MediaFLO, DVB-SH and ATSC-M/H." ATSC-M/H is a future standard under
consideration to allow ATSC digital television broadcast signals to be
received by mobile devices.
Of the three contenders in the United States, Siano sees that DVB-SH
could be potentially successful, largely because the standard's ability
to blanket the U.S. market via satellite. The infrastructure is already
being built.
But as for Qualcomm-developed MediaFLO, Ironi said, "Qualcomm got
nothing out of it, since both Verizon and AT&T are almost hiding it from
the consumer." The $15 per month subscription fee for MediaFLO isn't
cheap, either. Operators, moreover, are not making MediaFLO-based mobile
TV features available on their most popular phones.
Ironi observed that ATSC-M/H may have a chance but its infrastructure
will remain a problem. The idea behind ATSC-M/H is to let mobile phone
users watch terrestrial digital TV programs already available on the
ATSC standard, but it still requires substantial infrastructure build-up
to make it mobile friendly. "When we ask who is going to build it,
everyone goes silent on you," said Ironi.
All materials on this site Copyright 2008 TechInsights, a Division of
United Business Media LLC. All rights reserved.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
