A contract this week awarded to mobile TV encoder specialist Envivio underpins what most of the mobile TV community has found hard to believe, that Brazil is 100% committed to 1seg mobile TV.
Envivio announced this week that MTV in Brazil, owned by Abril, the nation’s largest magazine publisher, and by Viacom Networks Brazil, has ordered an Envivio 4Caster B3 encoder, as have other, unnamed broadcasters there, to encode streams for both digital TV through ISDB-T, as well as 1seg mobile TV.
Ever since Summer 2006, when Brazil opted for the Japanese created technology standard, in a deal where Japanese interests relaxed royalties, and offered Japanese subsidies to build a semiconductor factory there, mobile TV players have doubted the deal’s authenticity.
‘Oh they’ll use it for DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television), but mobile TV will go to DVB-H,’ said at least three usually trustworthy sources to us at the time ‘ all wrong it seems.
The thing is that broadcasters can invest in a single set up for transmitters, and a single set of encoding and encapsulation technology. What Brazil has done is to adjust the technology slightly for Brazil calling it Sistema Brasileiro de Televisao Digital Terrestre (SBTD-T) with minor technological adjustments, different middleware and H.264 compression mandated.
The results were supposed to be here in early 2007, but will make it by the end o the year after all, and if the system works well, Japan hopes to persuade other South American countries to adopt the technology so that mobile TV devices can roam throughout South America.
There are issues with ISDB-T 1seg. The radio is on all the time unlike MediaFLO and DVB-H, but the spectrum that a 1seg radio has to extract data from is tiny, a single 429 KHz segment of a well denoted 6 MHz channel. A DVB-H radio is on for about a 15th of the time, with data rates from 5 Mbps upwards depending on modulation, while the ISDB-T radios are on all the time with data rates around 220 Kbps. The net result is that on average DVB-H uses around 45mW to show TV, peaking at 190mW when its radio is on. ISDB-T 1seg devices are around 85mW all the time, roughly twice the battery drain and therefore half the battery life.
Also in Japan, in order to get enough data on the broadcast using MPEG2, it initially had to select modulation modes that are less effective at in-door penetration, although 1seg is now sent in H.264.
So suddenly Brazil’s decision could mean that it has an effective national mobile TV service way ahead of the US, at least two years ahead, since MediaFLO is limited to the suddenly open Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, each with 60 million customers apiece, but reaching only half of the total handset owners in the US and even then limited to the markets that Qualcomm builds its network out in, again less than half the US so far.
Previously it was thought that Telefonica and other cellcos might build their own DVB-H networks or use or multicasting systems in Brazil, or that Qualcomm with its MediaFLO system would try to find a spectrum partner there. But anyone not prepared to give a chance to a subsidized, government mandated system which is having spectacular growth in another leading mobile country, is crazy. Like Japan, by the time a superior additional technology is put in place, two years will have gone by, and the market will probably have a 20% market penetration, which in Brazil is 20% only of the 58% of its 188 million people which have a handset, around 110 million. So 20% would be 22 million, which other countries dream of in mobile TV. But would it. Perhaps the Brazilian economy cannot generate the same amount of growth as Japan, but then again, perhaps it could generate more.
It has struck us that many new buyers will be stimulated by such a system, and Brazilian mobile handset usage, already rising at the rate of 10 million new devices a year, may accelerate entirely because of the ubiquitous availability of TV on those handsets. What about 25 million in two years, 40 million in three? It’s feasible.
It didn’t take a genius in the Envivio strategy department to focus hard enough on getting an encoder that was right for the SBTD-T Brazilian market and bringing it to the table first, not with those kinds of numbers.
‘The broadcasting community in Brazil is very excited about the enormous potential offered by ISDB-T. Not only does it allow us to offer digital SD and HD services directly to viewers, but also to expand our offering to include mobile TV,’ said Valter Pascotto, Director of Engineering at MTV Brazil. ‘It is well known that 1seg transmission offers superior signal delivery. Coupling this with the Envivio’s excellent video encoding, we are able to offer an exceptionally high quality mobile TV experience. So good in fact, I believe it will be this mobile TV service that really catches our customers’ attention, and drives the broad adoption of digital TV in Brazil.’
MTV and five other broadcasters – TV Globo, TV Record, BAND TV, SBT, and TV Gazeta – officially began their digital terrestrial TV broadcasts in S’o Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil on December 2nd. Service bouquets include mobile, SD and HD content. Coverage for the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Goiania, Salvador, and Recife is targeted for 2008.