[opendtv] Re: Public M/H information
- From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:52:28 -0800
It's always interesting to see what people come away with when they are
exposed to new things.
Tom, do you actually pay for Sprint PCS Vision? If so, that's funny. You
don't' get 30fps video in 16:9 with that phone, Tom. And, you only get
pre-digested clips. As for the iPhone, Craig and I went into that a few
days back. You see, the iPhone screen is taller than it is wide, Tom. It's
240 wide. And, Tom, a "single screen" handset here is wider than high.
And, it's 240 high, and 416 wide. Are the numbers hurting your head?
But, it will be possible to stack the video with other video, or map
presentations, or other data, so that you can have two video sources on --
say -- a suitably-equipped iPhone, stacked one atop another. The video size
is appropriate even in the rear seat of a car, but it might be just a bit of
a stretch.
Did you note the part about the possibility of having SVC (scalable video
coding) in a pay sub-channel, with the main video free? In other words,
it's possible, bandwidth willing, to offer enhanced video, and even to
charge for it!
Indeed, with proper business and technical arrangements, it might even be
possible to have enhanced video (SVC) offered on say a MediaFlo type
network, and the lower-resolution video on M/H. I could say more, but much
of the early, basic considerations, including "system requirements" have not
been made public, and will probably never be made public. I'll go out on a
limb and say that with M/H it will be technically possible to, say, drive up
I-95 and have the same "service" on your screen continuously usable, despite
shifting from transmitter to service to service area, and back again. It's
all in the metadata ...
I strongly doubt that your 2" wide phone screen presents as much as 240
pixels, and it certainly doesn't present 416 pixels. The three screen
heights is for "home viewing" and not too many people will want to watch m/h
content at home, where higher resolution screens are available.
It will be very difficult to present M/H content in the same transport
stream with HD content, at least if there is much motion in the HD content.
However, there are several ways of provisioning this service, and Ion
Networks for one has indicated that they will be interested in talking to
other broadcasters about providing some of their content in an M/H
broadcast.
Only time will tell.
Also, there are several ways to charge or not charge for this content. The
point is that your Sprint phone cannot offer you network or local content on
a day and date basis. M/H can do just that. If you want to watch
pre-digested clip casts and pay for the privilege, you are free to do that,
but you don't pay for cable tv, right? That's why I doubt you make much use
of Sprint PCS vision.
PEOPLE DON'T WATCH TECHNOLOGY, they watch content. Ubiquity is the word
here -- and "don't miss a second."
What you were exposed to in this presentation is a technology that
broadcasters can use to repurpose (most of) their existing content to a new
arena, at a cost of less than $300k.
You were also exposed to at least one hand-held receiver that would support
DVB-H, ATSC M/H, MediaFLO, etc in a single unit, with -- ahem -- a unified
Electronic Service Guide. You were also exposed for the first time to a
rich media environment (OMA-RME for traffic maps, and eventually
location-based presentations. One that ALSO works across all the above
media platforms.
What you talk about is the "chimp" of Sprint PCS Vision (a unicast, not
broadcast) system, and screen size. You are lucky if your 2" phone even has
120 pixels across, Tom.
120 pixels across a 2" screen is 60 pixels per inch. Which is a fairly high
dot pitch. It's simply math, but Barbie says "Math is hard."
John Willkie
-----Mensaje original-----
De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En
nombre de Tom Barry
Enviado el: Thursday, December 18, 2008 8:19 PM
Para: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Asunto: [opendtv] Re: Public M/H information
Interesting. I'm not sure 240p will be enough even for mobile. It has
to compete with what I can get already as part of my Sprint PCS Vision
plan and is I think already less than the rez of an iphone.
Supposedly at a viewing distance of 3 screen heights the sweet spot for
human vision is about 1080p. I guess I view my 2" high phone screen
(sideways) at maybe 8 screen heights viewing distance so it would peak
out at about a resolution of 1080p * 3/8, or about 405 lines even for
that very small screen. I'm guessing even smart phones will soon have
an average resolution of above 240p.
But maybe a free advertising supported mobile simulcast of the network
HD broadcast could still be viable. ??
- Tom
John Willkie wrote:
> http://www.oab.org/cffm/custom/PDFs/Jay%20Adrick%20presentation.pdf
>
>
>
> which tends to open the tent door quite a bit .
>
>
>
> John Willkie
>
>
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