Two rival mobile TV formats will go live in trials in Germany, in time for the upcoming Football World Cup there next month:
— DVB-H mobile TV trials have gone live in Germany from today, on E-Plus, O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone, coinciding with the upcoming World Cup. The trials will run until August 31, 2006 in Berlin, Hamburg and Hanover. In Munich, the pilot project will finish earlier, on July 31, 2006. 14 TV programmes and 6 radio programmes will be included in the service. The terminals will be provided by BenQ, Motorola, Nokia, Sagem and Samsung. More info here.
— Meanwhile, Korean rival format DMB will go live later this week in Germany, also before the World Cup. Mobiles Fernsehen Deutschland GmbH (MFD) has secured spectrum from local media authorities to broadcast TV signals to mobile phones, using DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) standard. MFD will collaborate with mobile phone service provider Debitel to offer commercial service from May 31 in a number of cities, including eight of the twelve hosting the World Cup games.
MFD has struck license deals with several German broadcasting companies, including public broadcaster ZDF, which has the rights to air half of the 96 tournament games. MFD has also deployed infrastructure in the World Cup cities Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg, Hanover, Munich and Stuttgart.
Some screenshots of the two services are here.
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