For years, European and Asian mobile phone customers have taken for granted the ability to watch television on their cell phones. It’s a large part of the reason why non-cable television in these locations is comparatively thriving compared to the US. Cell phone television is particularly common in Japan. So where is it in the United States already?
It’s coming. 22 cities are rushing to try to get a live mobile pedestrian handheld (or MPH) system running. MPH, for those in the know, is a modification of conventional transmissions that makes for reliable television reception is incredibly difficult when the receiver is moving. The MPH standard allows for both standard definition and high definition broadcasting, and also includes advanced video and audio coding and power saving features for mobile receivers.
Great stuff for those who want to watch House on their handsets. But unless you live in Washington, D.C. you’ll have an indefinite wait ahead of you.
The Open Mobile Video Colition have just announced that Washington D.C.’s local CBS, PBS, NBC and Ion affiliates will be ready to broadcast with MPH transmissions by late summer.
Now all that is missing is the hardware. Clearly there’s no American handsets out there yet that support the technology, although Dell has been banking on mobile television being an important feature of future netbooks with their add-on cards for the Dell Mini series… and which will supposedly be followed by a showing this week of a netbook with an integrated MPH tuner.
That’s a smart move on Dell’s part: with their long battery life and low-power chips, netbooks are a good fit for mobile television. Now let’s see Verizon and AT&T start bringing over some of those sexy MPH handsets from Japan.
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