It’s Not All DVB-H vs MediaFLO…

BetaNews has a good article outlining some of the competition to broadcast mobile TV, focusing on a new start-up in Seoul called Ubicode, which has won a contract with handset providers in Korea to develop their mobile IPTV service platform. There are other unicast platforms, and the article notes that “IPTV platforms do have one conceptual advantage over DVB-H and MediaFLO: Based on Internet technology, they enable unicasting on-demand rather than adopting the broadcast metaphor made prominent by analog TV”. Which is true, but it’s not really new — the problem with anything that uses the mobile network is the danger of overloading the network, and that’s the thing that broadcast mobile TV aims to prevent.
The article also notes that in a couple of years TV will be a possible competitor, once the US moves to an all-digital broadcast TV standard. The US’s “television infrastructure will be based on a digital standard whose low-resolution option – 480 lines – is perfectly geared for mobile devices. Couple that with the fact that TV has a sort of permanent contract with the nation’s largest content providers – CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, et al – and you’d think CE providers would relish the prospects of a digital television platform served up for them by no less than a Congressional mandate”.

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