Comments on: AT&T Wants Its MobiTV

By: Brian McConnell

Brian McConnell — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:09:54 +0000

What I don't understand is why anybody needs MobiTV in the first place. It's muzak/basic cable on the Internet.

Any content provider who wants to make an MPEG4 or 3GPP stream available can easily do so.

All MobiTV does is force me to pay extra for a crappy cable package that requires me to download yet another piece of software.

Meh.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:05:23 +0000

ATT Broadband TV for $20/mth will allow us working stiffs to watch TV while on a corporate network, an environment where a USB ATSC tuner is not an available option.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:59:13 +0000

I watch plenty of TV on my laptop. I don't do it over the Internet, but have a USB ATSC tuner. Why would I want to pay $20/month for a poor package of cable channels when for a one-time price of ~$100 I can watch the major networks in digital TV (many sports and primetime in HD) plus local channels.

The broadcast stations have a lot more capacity to add channels. As more people realize that broadcast digital TV doesn't have all the ghosting and other problems of broadcast analog TV, they will get tuners, and the viewing options will expand.

By: Innovation Zen

Innovation Zen — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:28:11 +0000

Mobile TV still has to live up to the expectations. Many people still predict it to flop.

By: Karl

Karl — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:23:54 +0000

"They can avoid the costly upgrades, and finally be offering something consumers want and are likely to pay for. And oh, it is not recreating the past."

The only problem being consumers likely don't want 20 MobiTV channels for $20 a month, and they can't avoid those pesky network upgrades (getting VDSL & fiber to homes), because they are an absolutely essential part of AT&T's survival.