Alex Mestre from Abertis Telecom spoke about ’smart mobile TV coverage’. What is that, you ask? Does it have something to do with the Marx Brothers? Alex argued that, in so far as as their movie ‘Night at the Opera’ was about squeezing too many people into the same room, yes it does.
Objectively, it has to be said that European DVB-H has not been the success that Korean and Japanese broadcast to mobile systems have been. A variety of reasons can be found. One is that 3G provides the same kind of service and still has spare capacity. Another is the only services successful in the world have been the ‘free to air’ broadcast to mobile services in Japan and Korea. Subscription just may not not work. Another argument is that satellite coverage could work better….the hybrid DVB-SH system for example.
Alex put forward a plan for using a combination of 3G and DVB-H and DVB-SH, depending on city type and user situation. Interesting idea, and worth getting Alex presentation to read it. This is ’smart mobile TV’. A mobile handset that ‘does ‘em all’.
But is it practical? Would all the actors ever cooperate in the way needed? What do you think? And what about ‘MediaFLO’?
01/04/2009 at 22:40
hi,
i really don’t know if this post will be read by anyone so later anyway i’d like to submit my opinion on DVB-H failure looking at the italian experience.
people don’t see mobile television such a compelling experience to pay for it..
now that plain FTA DVB-T mobile phones are coming (like in Germany) and are “good enough”, people will choose them and that’s all.
no more wasted bandwidth and “special gears” for airing twice the same service. goodbye DVB-H, we’ll not miss you too much..
the good news here is that DVB-T is already too good to be true, but it is!
just my 2 cents, of course!