The latest research on Mobile TV Power Consumption that I have read (Jan. 2007 by Signals Research Group) pegs consumption in mobile devices as:
LCD and back lighting - 70-75% Broadcast Receiver - 10-15% Media Player - 10-15%While every little bit helps, I would dare say that the consumption issue of display is the biggest mobile handheld hurdle...as well as (obviously) battery advances...
Mark Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
The power draw of fast CMOS chips is a problem that has been addressed for several years, and continues to be. So, just like those pessimistic assessments of power-hungry ATSC demods have been gradually proven to be ancient history, the same is happening to DVB-T receivers. And this means that the role of DVB-H starts to become questionable. The more time passes, the more such time-sliced schemes will be unnecessary for power savings. I'm all in favor of these trends, just as I've always been more in favor of improving reception of the basic 8T-VSB, making optimal use of what's already there (and adding a diversity antenna system), as opposed to layering on additional coding for a special-purpose stream. So: if DVB-T to battery operated portables becomes feasible, the same will be true for 8T-VSB. That's my prediction. And to me, duplicating this "radio model," where portable and fixed devices share the same signal, holds the most promise long term. *Certainly* from a consumer's point of view, if not from the point of view of someone trying to carve out a separate niche subscription market. Bert --------------------------------------- Shifting technology roils mobile TV DVB-T's portable play may obsolete DVB-H Junko Yoshida and Dylan McGrath (01/29/2007 9:00 AM EST) URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197000909 MANHASSET, N.Y. - What would happen if a specification designed to unify an emerging market became obsolete just as the market jelled? For DVB-H, rushed into development in 2004 to accommodate the low-power requirements of mobile television, the question may not be hypothetical. While the mobile-TV market in the West has developed at a snail's pace, semiconductor process technology has advanced so rapidly that DVB-T, a terrestrial DTV standard that had been thought too power-hungry for mobile TV, can now easily deliver TV broadcast to battery-operated portable devices. In the view of some, that may negate the need for DVB-H. The prospect that DVB-T may eclipse the handheld-specific variant for bringing mobile TV to portable devices--though not quite yet to cell phones--has some DVB-H chip vendors repurposing their products and shifting their targets for end-system and geographical markets. A case in point is Freescale Semiconductor Inc., which had thrown its weight behind DVB-H but now is pitching a low-power DVB-T tuner for portable media players. DVB-T power consumption has dropped to the point where users can safely watch extended TV programs on a portable player supporting the older format, said Berardino Baratta, general manager of Freescale's multimedia applications division. Likewise, DiBcom, a leading DVB-H demodulation chip maker, has cultivated a volume market, but not for DVB-H on cell phones. Rather, the company has built a business in DVB-T and DVB-T/DVB-H combo solutions for automotive and notebook PCs. DiBcom CEO Yannick Levy said the industry has sold 4 million DVB-T receiver dongles over the past two years in Europe alone, and DiBcom claims to have made the bulk of those sales. Vendors are also shifting geographical focus for their mobile-TV products. Analog Devices Inc., which has yet to achieve a sizable DVB-H deployment globally, is leveraging a demodulator developed for DVB-H to target China's GB-2006 terrestrial DTV standard (formerly called DMB-T/H). South Korea, Japan and China are "the three largest mobile-TV markets today," said David Robertson, product line director for ADI's high-speed converter group. The company is focusing on China and has opened a joint lab with Legend Silicon for developing GB-2006 mobile solutions,Robertson said.Microtune Inc. Is also pursuing a multistandard strategy for mobile TV, focusing on DVB-H and South Korea's T-DMB standard. It has scored a design win for a DVB-H tuner in LG handsets sold in Italy, and it considers China's mobile-TV market "a hot area," said Phil Spruce, mobile-TV product-marketing manager. But Spruce added that the final verdict on China's mobile-TV standard is "still not concrete." Process advancements are driving the rethinking of DTV standards. DiBcom's Levy said he had anticipated the current dilemma when the DVB group launched DVB-H in 2004. Levy started his company in 2000 to develop a DVB-T demodulator equipped with diversity implementations and Doppler effect compensations. In his view, DiBcom had already solved the DVB-T's mobility issues, and he was confident Moore's Law would reduce DVB-T's power appetite to palatable levels. Upstaging DVB-H The DVB Group, however, was convinced that DVB-T would falter for mobile apps and thus pursued DVB-H. The group achieved the handheld spec by integrating such techniques as time slicing (in which bursts of data are received periodically, allowing the receiver to power off when not active) and additional forward error correction. Three years ago, the combination of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) baseband processor, built on a 0.18-micron process, and a canned RF tuner for DVB-T consumed 1.5 watts, according to DiBcom's Levy. Today, the pairing of a DVB-T silicon tuner and an OFDM demodulator built on a 90-nanometer process consumes only 350 mW. Although the time-slicing feature of DVB-H can cut its power drain to 30 to 40 mW--a tenth of what DVB-T can offer today--DVB-T's 350 mW "isn't that bad," said Levy. South Korea's widely deployed T-DMB consumes 250 mW. Another potential allure of DVB-T--indeed, of terrestrial DTV standards in general--is its free-over-the-air content. "If there is stuff to watch, there is a better chance that consumers will buy mobile-TV handsets. That means we can sell more chips into handsets," said ADI's Robertson. In South Korea's booming mobile-TV market, terrestrial mobile-TV content is available free. Three of the six T-DMB service providers in Korea are subsidiaries of free-to-air terrestrial DTV broadcasters (broadcasts are based on the Advanced Television Systems Committee standard). Mobile-TV content is also free in Japan. Japan has embraced a simulcast model, ISDB-T, under which terrestrial digital-TV broadcast transmits QVGA signals for mobile-TV reception in addition to its main broadcast in SD and HD signals. The United Kingdom, Germany and France are among the European countries in the process of rolling out DVB-T-based free-to-air digital TV. But none thus far employs DVB-T for mobile broadcast. Even in the United States, mobile versions of the ATSC-based terrestrial digital-TV system are emerging. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung Electronics ran a demonstration trial of its Advanced-VSB mobile DTV technology. A-VSB (vestigial sideband) lets broadcasters transmit a mobile digital-TV signal on the same frequency used for standard television broadcasting. Although A-VSB at this point is a yet-to-be-ratified proposal bankrolled by Samsung, it is piquing interest in the repurposing of the free-to-air terrestrial digital standard. The United States is currently the most fragmented mobile-TV battleground, with several service providers--armed with different technologies and infrastructure--fighting over turf (see story, page 14). Freescale's Baratta said "the carrier play" is hobbling mobile-TV technologies like DVB-H. European picture Even in Europe, he said, the brighter prospect may be mobile TV based on DVB-T, delivered by free-over-the-air broadcasters, rather than DVB-H, whose broadcast and distribution requires collaboration with wireless carriers. But "not so fast," warned DiBcom's Levy, noting that technical implementations differ among the countries offering DVB-T-based free DTV broadcast. The United Kingdom, which launched DVB-T in 1997, is still using lower-power transmitters, and the "lower signal strength will become the main problem for portable reception," Levy said. The United Kingdom's use of legacy 2k mode instead of 8k mode for OFDM is another issue that works against DVB-T's use for mobile reception in that country. "I'd have to say good luck to that," Levy said. (In OFDM transmission, thousands of carrier frequencies, referred to as subcarriers, are transmitted in parallel. The 2k mode uses 1,705 subcarriers; the 8k mode uses 6,817.) Germany could be a better candidate for mobile DVB-T deployment because its infrastructure supports stronger transmission signals. Still, he added, the heart of the issue is coverage. Signal reception patterns vary from city to city, depending on the location of the DVB-T transmission tower. Thus broadcasters must shell out additional investment in infrastructure--such as gap fillers--to enable mobile TV for both outdoor and indoor reception. Which road to profit? It remains unclear whether any free-to-air broadcasters are willing to invest further in network infrastructure for mobile TV. While starting with DVB-T and gradually phasing in DVB-H is a possible scenario, "I am not seeing that yet," said Levy. DVB-H stands a better chance of wide deployment for mobile TV simply because it is optimized for mobility, said Yoram Solomon, senior director of strategic marketing and industry relations for Texas Instruments Inc.'s mobile connectivity solutions group. Solomon also suggested that DVB-H and DVB-T, promoted by the same DVB group, have too much in common to be considered competing technologies. Kees Joosse, senior director of business development for NXP Semiconductors (Eindhoven, Netherlands), acknowledged that the technical hurdles to DVB-T's mobile deployment are being overcome but questioned the business model. Because DVB-T is a free-to-air standard, cellular operators have no financial incentive to push (or subsidize) handset makers to add DVB-T receivers, Joosse said. DVB-H, by contrast, can be a revenue generator for cellular operators. But many chip vendors no longer consider cell phones the holy grail for mobile TV. Increasingly, portable media players and PDAs are digital-video-enabled. "Those products that sit between a laptop computer and a cell phone simply didn't exist four years ago," said ADI's Robertson. Such products come with bigger color screens, QVGA resolution and--most important--bigger batteries than cell phones, "making it easier to receive fixed TV signals," he added. All material on this site Copyright 2007 CMP 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.
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