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DVB-H standard for mobile TV
Commenting on the standard for mobile TV, Nokia's Kanjilal added: "A mobile TV device will receive the TV broadcast signal over a broadcasting network like a DVB-H (digital video broadcast - handheld) network, which is 'optimised' for mobile broadcasting. However, the interactivity aspects of the TV programs are delivered via the mobile networks (GPRS, EDGE or 3G) on the same device. For instance, when you vote or SMS, while watching the TV program, your response will be carried over the mobile network."
The DVB-H standard is based on the DVB-T standard, a widely accepted standard for the living room digital TV. Key industry players, such as broadcasters, broadcast network operators, mobile network operators and equipment vendors are all collaborating in defining a global standard for the benefit of all parties. Late last year, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) announced that the DVB-H would be adopted as the standard for mobile TV services in Europe. DVB-H is also under discussion in many other global standardization bodies.
The DVB-H (DVB-handset) was recently in the news as the broadcast standard for mobile TV. Commenting on the typical storage requirements for mobile TV, Reeder said mobile TV using a burst broadcast standard such as DVB-H required only a small cache, given the lower screen resolutions of such devices. This really worked effectively over 3G networks. Larger portable devices are likely to need significantly more memory to better buffer against signal dropouts, he advised.
For portable video recorder devices, the storage amount is a factor of the product. "It would be possible to store a couple of movies on 1GB of storage, although most products are currently aiming at either 5GB or 20GB sizes," he added. Reeder said that DVB-H products are currently under development and in trials with vendors like Nokia.
Cellnext's Kejriwal said: "Mobile TV services need to have some extremely advanced technology to make sure that you are receiving the signal clearly in the small handheld mobile. You might have five, six or seven different frequencies coming into or going out of your phone simultaneously, like GSM, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and digital TV. To get clean video signal with regard to fluid motion, you need to have some very advanced host-processing architectures, tightly coupled into the platform-dedicated accelerators devoted to that technology."
According to him, the two topmost standards are DVB-H and terrestrial-digital mobile broadcast (T-DMB) and more mobile-broadcasting technologies continue to proliferate. These range from Japan's integrated services digital broadcasting-terrestrial (ISDB-T) standard to South Korea's satellite-digital mobile broadcast (DMB-S) to MediaFLO - forward-link only in the United States. The FLO is optimized for mass delivery of multimedia content to mobile devices. "I would say that the choice is "intensely regional, directly tied to telecom issues, national deployment and frequency planning," he said.
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