Cellphone TV takes live hurdle

Asia, Europe vie for standard

HELSINKI--As fledgling endeavors to bring live television to mobile phones took a hurdle with the first real-time sports event broadcast at the Athletic World Championships last week, Europe and Asia are already battling with rival technology standards, industry and broadcasting sources said.
With studies in Europe showing that consumers may be willing to pay more than 10 euros (12.44 dollars) per month to watch an average five to 10 minutes of mobile TV per day, the race is on to launch TV services commercially in 2006.

For the "Finnish Mobile TV project" at the Helsinki Athletics competition, the world's biggest mobile phone company Nokia got together with network company Digita, operators Elisa and TeliaSonera, and TV stations YLE, MTV3 and Channel 4 to let 300 people test mobile real-time broadcasts on a smart phone equipped with an experimental TV receiver device.

Reviews were mixed, with users bemoaning the lack of elegance of the bulky device, colours not being true to nature, subtitles too tiny for comfort and the screen glaring like a mirror in sunlight.

But they reported a sharp image and good sound in the multi-channel package, which included domestic broadcasts of the Championship, compilation broadcasts for international distribution and five special Championships broadcasts of individual events. Trial users could also load other feeds from several Finnish and foreign broadcasters.

Jari Lahti, head of the new media department at Finnish Broadcaster YLE, admitted that the testers were "of course company VIPs and it was not like a consumer pilot study."

But it showed that "the technology is quite ready" even if devices were "still bulky," he told Agence France-Presse.

Mobile TV services with DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld) technology used by Nokia are being piloted in Spain, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia.

But Nokia's big rival, Korean mobile phone maker Samsung, has put its weight behind a competing standard, DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting).

"There is a very strong battle between Korea and Europe," said Jorma Laiho, Director for Technology at YLE.

Independent analysts say both have their advantages. Ville Ollikainen, Group Manager for Multiple Media Systems at the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT) said DVB-H was "more flexible, less power consuming and providing bandwidth."

But DVB-H could only broadcast terrestrial feeds whereas DMB allows for satellite delivery, he said.

"Its a typical standard race. I think that is absolutely possible that both are going to fly," said YLE's Lahti, noting that different standards already co-exist in digital television where they had led, however, to "consumer confusion."

According to sources at Nokia, the Finnish giant believes it is six to 12 months ahead of Samsung in its standard development.

The targeted market for mobile television is young consumers, said YLE technical manager Thomas Grenman.

Television programs will probably be tailor-made for mobile devices with clips of up to 10 minutes "because I dont think I would like to see a whole evening movie, for instance, from such a small screen," he said.

Manufacturers continue to set their sights on sports buffs as big consumers of mobile TV.

Nokia's head of multimedia communications Kari Tuutti said his company was hoping for a mass market for the phone by the time the Beijing Olympics kick off in 2008.