After a whopping 18 months, the Singapore Digital’s TV2GO Mobly TV trial finished at the end of November – ready for a commercial launch. The trial allowed e2e testing of the M-TV infrastructure needed, plus services too, which has allowed Singapore Digital to gather lots of Market Research data – nice.
According to Singapore Digital CEO Giulio Dorrucci, the TV2GO trial has revealed a great deal about how mobile TV technology performs in high-density living environments, and the challenge of providing high-quality coverage indoors.
You might already know that DVB-H has been designed to be both battery-efficient, but also to cope with (lots of) buildings – something that terrestrial tranmissions historically are not very good at. Ironically, most tests to-date have shown that people watch most Mobile TV, of any format, at home!
The TV2GO trial also did another important thing – made it free. As I just said in another post, FTA trials and/or live services have got to be in consideration for a stimulus of a Mobile TV service (just don’t ask me how to make money from it…. I won’t tell you without a big fat consultancy fee 😉 )
Content providers have included CNBC, Bloomberg, Disney, ESPN and WOWTV by Kamera; plus viewers could also experience interactive chat-room services, on-demand videos and web-links, teletext-to-mobile, and real-time voting on reality TV shows. Vital to the success of the trial was the expertise of technology partners Nokia and Sofia Digital, and integration partner, NCS.
The live service could/would/should be progressing further in 2009, although no launch date (at least that I am aware of) has been given.
[Original story via: Cellular news]