Mobile TV Interoperability Problems

A very good article published yesterday by the EE Times discusses the current issues which are holding back global deployments of mobile TV, in particular those based on the DVB-H standard. Fragmentation in the media codecs, electronic service guide and service protection mechanisms are the main problems, causing the industry to speed up the creation of interoperability guidelines and certification mechanisms.

3GSM 2006 Mobile TV Update - Part 1

Many sources have forecasted that mobile TV will be one of the hottest topics at 3GSM in Barcelona this year. And indeed, the show opened with some interesting news items. The first is a cooperation between Sony Ericsson and Nokia on DVB-H - the two companies announced that they cwill perform interoperability testing between Sony Ericsson's mobile handsets and Nokia's DVB-H network equipment.

The second item is the announcement by British Telecom, Virgin and Microsoft today regarding their plans to launch a commercial T-DMB service in the UK this year, following a successful trial. The big news is the addition of Microsoft to this party, since the company has so far been quite silent about its activities in the mobile broadcast TV market. The service was demonstrated at 3GSM on a mobile handset prototype designed by TTP and HTC. The design of the handset prototype, which runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and is powered by the NeoMagic MiMagic6+ multimedia processor, will also be licensed to other handset vendors.

I'll keep you updated on other Mobile TV news from 3GSM 2006 in Barcelona as it becomes available.