LG has announced that it is launching the KB770 (with Free-to-air DVB-T tuner) in to Germany, a market awash it seems with DVB-T capable Mobile devices. For those of you that don’t read IntoMobile so often (shame shame shame on you!), Germany has a unique situation where the DVB-T spec was modified to allow mobile devices to access the transmissions from the beginning – at odds with pretty much everywhere else in Europe.
Interestingly, the view of a company called Telegent is that Mobile TV should have a free-to-air element in order to stimulate usage. In Germany of course this is less of an issue since the infrastructure exists – so it’s just a handset SKU addition. But with DVB-H, an entire network has to be rolled out – so you can imagine there are not many keen on doing “free” Mobly TV!
However, I do take Telegent’s point as a very good one – certainly stimulating interest and demand is important, and something that DVB-H commercial services (in general) could definitely do with.
I’ve got to wonder what the eventual business model is going to be for a (successful) Mobly TV service – I haven’t seen one to-date that gives you the “ah, yes, that’s it” moment – meanwhile, those continental cousins over in Germany are getting to use cool handsets, with even cooler services! It’s not fair, wah!!!
[Original story via: broadcastbuyer.tv]