TV on Mobile Gets Going
By Suzanne Deffree -- EDN, February 3, 2005
Perhaps the most disruptive technology we'll see in our lifetimes is the television, a device that began bringing the world into our living rooms more than 75 years ago. Since its birth, TV has seen a lifetime of changes -- the explosive growth of the market in the 1950s, color sets mid-decade, portable TVs in the 1980s that weighed more than some current laptops and the slim flat-panels of today.
Now some IC players are arguing that it's time TV took its next major step, from the stationary set at home to your mobile phone. The idea isn't new, reminds Leon P.J. Husson, executive VP of Philips Semiconductors' consumer business. Indeed, it was done in Japan's domestic market a few years back, he noted. But the methods were messy and involved awkward handsets that Husson said kept the product from selling to other markets.
"Of course, with the advent of digital video broadcast, that landscape will change dramatically," he remarked. "Then it becomes quite easy to distribute high quality TV reception to all sorts of portable devices. The next big thing from our view is what we call TV on mobile."
The company, along with Universal Studios, Vodafone and Nokia, has conducted a test run of sorts in Berlin. The city was chosen based on its high level of technical advancement and because it has no terrestrial or analog TV signals.
"Based on the initial feedback from end users this is very likely to become a feature that will get significant attachment base," Husson told Electronic News at the recent Consumer Electronic Show. "We are very bullish about this."
Philips isn't alone in its enthusiasm. Texas Instruments has put a lot of weight behind its Hollywood technology, a digital TV chip for cell phones. Qualcomm has its own nationwide “mediacast” network subsidiary to offer media content for CDMA2000 and UMTS networks. And Verizon and Cingular have both made recent announcements of TV on handsets in United States metro areas.
Unavoidable Static
Despite the industry push toward TV viewing on a cell, obstacles lay in route. One being screen size. While screen quality has improved dramatically in the last few years -- even in 2004 alone -- the typically cell phone screen is two to three inches.
"I can see maybe a cell phone being able to download video clips or maybe 20 second snippets of news highlights, but for something like a baseball game or half hour sitcom, that would be a little more difficult [to view]," concluded Brian Matas, VP of market research at IC Insights.
One way Philips looks to get around this is by allowing the TV images to be shared or streamed to another display device with a larger screen, like a laptop. But that opens a whole other issue for the technology: digital rights management.
"That's a pretty significant issue," Matas said. "When we talk about just copying movies on a DVD, we're just scratching the surface. When we talk about licensing management with TV, it's a whole new ballgame. There's a lot to resolve in that area. This is another one of these hurdles to wider spread adoption of this technology."
Philips' Husson concurs that digital rights management will prove to be more than a stumbling block. "The negating factor for TV on mobile will be sorting the business. Things like rights management will be the issues that determine if this takes off in the market."
Key to this, claims M-Systems, will be storage. "It's not a question of if you need mass storage devices, but will it be cards or will it be embedded," said Arie Tal, marketing director at the flash memory specialist. "We say it's going to be embedded."
Tal compares handsets to digital cameras, where consumers almost always upgrade their memory. Consumers may not upgrade card memory on a cell phone to handle the advanced features because even without the card the device would still function as a cell phone. "But that's not the point; the operator wants you to use the services. He doesn't want to count on luck, if you upgrade or don't upgrade, so he's going to want to embed enough storage."
Embedding storage could also solve the digital rights issue, according to Tal. "If it's embedded, [the manufacturer] can control the information. He can allow you to move stuff to your PC or not, it's up to him. He controls the data, he can guarantee some kind of rights management for the service to the content owners he has deals with."
Despite the bumps in the road ahead, all agree that the technology has strong potential. When is another question. Tal expects the TV revolution to come as quickly as 3G does to the handset. Philip's Husson, alluding to further announcements at the 3GSM World Congress later this month, simply believes it will take some time to pick up users. Meanwhile, IC Insights' Matas projects wide-spread adoption in five years or so.
