Telegent Systems and Arima Communications Corp., a leading Taiwanese handset ODM company, have announced that Arima has enhanced its free-to-air TV handset design incorporating Telegent’s mobile TV technology to enable consumers tosend and receive SMS messages while watching live, free broadcast TV.

The SMS-TV feature, which will be commercially available in handset designs this summer, is targeted towards consumers who want to chat with one another while watching their favorite programs as well as those who like to interact with participation TV programs through voting or polling. Additionally, the design enables operators to use free-to-air mobile TV to generate revenue from related phone services.

Worldscreen.com is reporting that a joint venture between Norweigan broadcasters NRK, TV2, and Modern Times Group, have  launched MiniTV – a new mobile-TV service that uses the T-DMB standard.

T-DMB isn’t something we’ve really seen in Europe much, and has won most of it’s customers in Asia. Interestingly, there are going to be a mixture of Free-to-air channels, and Pay-TV. The license will be valid until 2011, and we can expect stuff like VoD and interactive too! Nice!

[Via: Worldscreen.com]

Well, I am kind of wondering whether it might have. As has been the subject of past posts I have written, my feeling is that Mobile (Broadcast) TV was in a very precarious state, even before the recent economic woes came upon us.

Now that all IT companies (Operators, Vendors, Service Providers) are feeling the pinch, as are customers, the last thing they are likely to spend out on is Mobile TV infrastructure for broadcast services. Handsets vendors are also not making many (if any) Mobile TV handsets.

With the likes of 3GPP-ratified LTE just around the corner, you have got to wonder if there if any life left in the the ol’ dog – I am beginning to think that since the less-than-stellar performance of Mobile TV (compared to some other services), Operators in particular are giving it a rest for the moment until 4G comes bounding along with it’s huge speeds (capable of delivering lots of good-quality video).

What do you think? Is Mobile TV dead in it’s current form? Is the future side-loading video from home plus some downloads, or is there an as-yet-unproven delivery system waiting in the wings? Comments welcome!

Spb Software announced that their mobile TV viewing application for Windows Mobile which we covered before, Spb TV, is now richer for 40 new TV channels, with majority of them being suggested by Spb TV users. As a result, Spb TV now provides access to approximately 100 international mobile TV channels.

Those not familiar should know that Spb TV is a subscription-free mobile IPTV viewer, designed for tuning in to publicly available digital TV channels from all over the world. It is available for virtually all Windows Mobile-powered smartphones, whether they have a touchscreen or not, for $14.95. Interested users can get more information from two pages on Spb Software’s website: Spb TV for Windows Mobile Standard and Professional edition.

Yeah, that blurry picture wasn’t really doing it for me either, but now we’ve got solid specs, names and a nice picture of the follow-up to the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre. To be launched as Eos, and codenamed either “Pixie” or “Castle”, this WebOS handset promises to proudly carry on the tradition of the Treo line. Before anything, here are the specs.

• Quadband GSM / HSDPA (including 850 / 1900 frequencies)
• 4GB storage
• 10.6mm x 55 mm x 111 mm
• 100 grams
• 2.63-inch, 320 x 400 capacitive display
• Price: $349 before rebates
• Camera: 2 megapixel fixed focus digital camera and flash / video capture
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1 w/ A2DP and EDR, USB 2.0 via micro USB
• Removable 1150 mAh battery (4 hours 3G talk time)
• Messaging: SMS, MMS (picture and video only), integrated IM client
• Contact sync with AT&T (NYSE: T) Address Book
• MediaNet
• Cellular Video
• Email: POP3, IMAP4, and EAS support
• A-GPS
• Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, AAC+ ringtones
• Video Playback: MPEG4, H.264, H.263

Personally, I think the name EROS might have been a little sexier, Eos is apparently the Greek goddess of the dawn – pretty awesome too. We had heard awhile back that a WebOS-toting Centro would be coming to the market in the fall, and Engadget’s tipsters are saying EOS will for sure be coming to AT&T, so that should give you a pretty good idea of what to look out for. Still no removable memory though? For shame, Palm. It’s good that they’re following up on the Palm Pre hype with a GSM handset – after all, not everyone would be willing to switch carriers for it. If you’re already with Sprint (NYSE: S), however, I think it’s safe to say the Pre is notably cooler than the Eos, and few existing customers will jump over to AT&T for it.

[via Engadget]

According to the EE Times and Reuters, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has sold it’s enterprise Mobile TV BU (business unit) to Wipro. Apparently the BU had about 40 employees, who were focused on creating both hardware and softtware to enable the mobile device to access the broadcasting network.

Interesting eh? I wonder, if in this small piece of news, we can see the start of the last gasps for Moby TV in the current broadcast mode. Unfortunately it hasn’t really taken off in a big way, with a lack of solid business cases, and huge buildout costs. With 3.75G and 4G networks just round the corner, its quickly becoming possible to push more and more data round the ’standard’ network, rather than worrying about another wireless network that is just for TV.

4G should definitely mean good-quality streaming to mobiles, and even HSPA+ (3.75G in my mind) has some impressive data rates  – and I think these are going to edge out the likes of DVB-H and co. Time will tell, however.

[Original story via: EETimes via: Reuters]

Hulu has been pushing hard to broadcast their streaming TV broadcast to every corner of the web. So, what’s next? The iPhone, of course! According to the Silicon Alley Insider, Hulu is making a move into the smartphone space with a streaming video iPhone application. The Hulu iPhone application would give iPhone users mobile access to Hulu’s collection of TV shows and movies, presumably free of charge.

News of a Hulu iPhone app destined for AppStore approval should give hope to Slingbox users still waiting for the Slingbox iPhone application. Recent speculation had Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) denying the Slingbox Mobile iPhone app’s entry into the iPhone App Store, but if Hulu’s iPhone application makes it all the way through, there’s still hope for Sling Media’s iPhone player.

Not only will the iPhone Hulu app stream video over both 3G and WiFi connections, an industry-insider claims that the iPhone-based Hulu experience will be as “badass” as the desktop experience. We’re expecting to see the app show up on the iTunes AppStore in a few months, although that timeline can change at Apple’s whim.

If you haven’t yet seen what Hulu has to offer, may we suggest hitting up Hulu’s website? If the iPhone app is even a fraction as amazing as the Hulu website, we’re in for one awesome iPhone application!

[Via: SiliconAlleyInsider]

Few days ago we talked about Orange France’s new iPhone app/service, designed to allows users to enjoy watching TV while on-the-go, and now we’ve heard Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Portugal has a similar/same offering for its users.

Developed by WIT Software, the application called “Vodafone Mobile TV” is available as a free download for every iPhone ownin’ Vodafone Portugal customer and just like Orange’s solution, provides users with a selection of channels to choose from. Among the cool features of the app, we highlight the so called Fast Channel Switching, which allows users to zap TV channels in an easy, “similar to the real-life TV” way.

We’re not sure how much Voda charges for the data transferred and whether there are some new, mobile TV specific plans created for the offering. We do, however, know that WIT Software is looking for other carrier partners for their application/service, meaning we could see this being rolled out in other markets in the near future. We’ll keep watching…

Orange has recently launched a new mobile TV offering for its iPhone owning subscribers in France. The deal includes a native iPhone app called “TV from Orange,” which allows interested users to access to around 60 TV channels such as French national, TNT and thematic channels. The carrier is saying the streaming will work even on the first gen iPhones, although we’re kinda sceptical EDGE can handle all that data.

As for the pricing, the “TV option” service is available starting from 6 EUR per month, or on a pay-as-you-go basis: by volume (1 EUR cent/10Kb), or per session (50 EUR cents/20 minutes).

The same release also talks about the new “Origami Star plans for the iPhone,” that start from 42 EUR per month and include unlimited Internet access, unlimited Visual Voicemail, unlimited  WiFi in mainland France across the 30,000 Orange Wi-Fi access hotspots, unlimited access to more than 20 TV channels, unlimited SMS across all mainland operators from 8pm to 8am and at weekends, unlimited calls across all operators from 8pm to 8am and at weekends (3h plan or higher)…

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

Envivio have announced their new Elite Compression™ enhancement for their award-winning 4Caster C4 and M2 mobile TV encoders – basically another opmtimisation tuning the media playback on popular mobile devices. It gets deployed at the operator headend, and works within standards, so no changes to the subscriber handsets. Elite Compression will debut at the CTIA Wireless show, which IntoMobile is attending, by the way!

Elite Compression bridges the performance gap that currently exists in the mobile streaming market by targeting the many mass market mobile devices which use their central processor to decode media content. While H.263 and MPEG-4 Simple Profile compression are well matched to the capabilities of older or entry level mobile devices, they underutilize the performance of modern mid-range handsets using processors such as the ARM11. This prevents subscribers from enjoying the full media playback capability of their new devices. Conversely the more complex H.264 Baseline Profile is suitable only for premium handsets with dedicated video decoding hardware as it overloads even the newest mid-range devices resulting in low frame rate video and an unacceptable user experience.

Elite Compression fills the significant void between those extremes by enabling mainstream mid-range devices, which comprise the majority of handsets in use, to deliver their optimum video and audio playback experience. Elite Compression is based on the H.264 standard, making it compatible with the standard media players provided by companies such as PV, NXP and RealNetworks that are already installed on millions of handsets.

The addition of Elite Compression takes place entirely at the headend, making it easy for operators to deploy. Its effect, however, is far-reaching and offers dramatic improvements in mobile TV performance across the broadest spectrum of mobile devices. Typical competing encoding solutions rely on single vendor, proprietary technologies which force operators to update every individual handset to maintain compatibility. In contrast, Envivio Elite Compression is based on the H.264 open standard. As a result it does not require special handset players or any handset upgrades at all to enhance the performance on today’s most popular and widely used phones. The net result is an instant improvement in the quality of experience for an operator’s existing subscriber base.

Encoding is key part of the mobile content delivery process – if it isn’t up to scratch, you can kiss your user experience goodbye. With Envivio’s long-standing experience in this area, Operators who deploy this I think should have some pretty satisfied customers!

You can check out Envivio’s site here.
[Via: streamingmedia.com]