More of the same: Mobile TV facing tough times ahead

….so says Vnunet.com, in an article based on the analysis of a research company called “Juniper Research”. Specifically the fact that DVB-H is likely to be hit by the prevalance of both analogue and digital (DVB-T) free-to-air (FTA) terrestrial signal availablity.

Juniper’s report is called “Mobile TV:Opportunities for Streamed & Broadcast Services, 2008-2013“, and it says that whilst consumer spending on mobile broadcast TV will be substantial it will be lower than previously predicted.

The reports author apparently highlights that actually it’s a three-way dance between paid-for services on DVB-H standard broadcasts, existing FTA terrestrial broadcasts via DVB-T, and then finally also opportunities for the 3G unicast (“one to one”) streaming, that currently exists.

For sure, the M-TV situation varies widely from country to country, and indeed continent to continent. But let’s take a bit more of a look about the whole DVB-H vs DVB-T equation. YES, there are handsets that receive both signal standards, BUT, there’s a fundamental difference with the propagation of the DVB-T signal in Germany, as compared with everywhere else. And remember, Germany is often quoted as the case study example of where DVB-T has disrupted DVB-H (to the point where in fact the DVB-H has been withdrawn to the organisation that were awarded it!).

Let me handover to Vesku, who works at a prominent Mobile Handset Vendor:

“…[DVB-T]… works nearly well enough for a satisfactory user experience only in Germany. Every other country has designed their DVB-T networks for reception with large rooftop antennas which makes these kinds of devices unusable. The reason why DVB-T was built like it has in Germany is the large market share of cable means there were no rooftop antennas so the network had to work with small indoor antennas. They also wanted TV to work in cars on the autobahns.
The technical jargon is they selected 16-QAM modulation instead of 64-QAM everyone else chose.
…[The]… next question probably is that could other countries modify their DVB-T networks to also make these DVB-T mobiles functional? The short answer is “no”. Going from 64-QAM to 16-QAM means a lot less bandwidth, meaning they would have take out channels (… [which equals]… revenue). A cheaper option is to dedicate one multiplex for mobile use and squeeze all the channels into that in mobile-optimized form …[a la]… DVB-H.

So there you have it, whilst DVB-T could be considered a “disruptive” mobile standard (and is for Germany), it’s not going to be in other countries, due to the fact that (in simple terms) you need a BIG HIGH AERIAL to capture the signal – and as we all know, Mobile devices are not usually equipped with these

Nonetheless, the evolution of Mobile TV is a really interesting area, and the battle is not over yet…. watch this space!

Thanks to Vesku for his input for this post

[Original story via: Vnunet.com]