Mobile TV was definitely on the back burner at IBC this year, few contracts to announce, only one or two new products among a certain embarrassment that the technology has not yet done better, especially here in Europe.
Both Thomson and Alcatel Lucent were talking about getting part of the add on contract for 3 Italia, which is continuing to invest in DVB-H mobile services, despite the fact that most of Europe is unable to get initial services off the ground.
Thomson has provided a new operations centre for the Mobile TV service with its own video headend which takes its capability up to 20 channels. The system uses the Thomson’s ViBE Mobile TV encoder offering H.264 compression. But that deal was completed in July and just held over so that Thomson had something to release at IBC. Meanwhile Alcatel-Lucent said it had signed a turnkey equipment and services contract with 3 Italia to expand and optimize its broadcast Mobile TV network throughout Italy.
This actually looks bad news for RRD which provided the first 1000 transmitters that the service is based on, since this deal involves introducing Alcatel transmitters into the mix, which it says will improve indoor coverage of the network and it will add some remote monitoring. It will use the Alcatel 9600 DTH transmitter which can deliver DVB-T and DVB-H. 3 Italia is now said to have 850,000 customers, which is a figure that either has not been updated or not risen, for some time
Alcatel put on a demonstration targeting the UHF band of its DVB-SH satellite mobile TV system, featuring contributions from Audemat, Axcera, DiBcom, RVR Elettronica, Sagem Mobiles, Sidsa, TeamCast and UDcast the UHF band. The implication appears to be that DVB-SH is more efficient than DVB-H and Alcatel could install it without a satellite element.
Alcatel-Lucent demonstrated DVB-SH in UHF, unified UHF/S-Band access on a single handset and unified DVB-H/DVB-SH access on a single handset. So what started as a theory a few years ago now clearly works.
Meanwhile broadcast equipment provider Enensys, announced partnerships with Viaccess, LG Electronics, Expway and Sagem at the show to deliver DRM for Mobile TV based on the OMA BCAST SmartCard Profile Standard.
Siano Mobile Silicon unveiled another design win at Italian DVB-H personal TV maker Quantum using Siano’s internal chip antenna. Siano’s DVB-H silicon receiver chips together with its SMS8021 internal chip antenna make up the Personal TV Media Player from Quantum which it says it the first connected PMP in the world featuring both OSF IPDC and OMA BCAST personal mobile TV, as well as navigation.
Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano, added, ‘As the demands of mobile entertainment grow, converged multi-media devices are merging entertainment, navigation and mobile TV to provide consumers with the ultimate experience. The debut of Quantum’s personal media player meets these ‘all in one’ demands and we are thrilled to be the selected as the mobile TV chip vendor of choice.’
But Ironi was perhaps distracted by what has been going on elsewhere in the world, and Siano now threatens to overtake the lead that DiBcom had established in mobile TV chips and related design wins. He claims a 50% market share for chips delivered so far in China using the CMMB mobile TV technology, which he said was ‘ahead of expectations,’ and is almost ready to announced the company’s first ISDB-T design wins, most probably in Brazil.
Mirics a UK designer of low power RF tuners for mobile TV, told us that it had now developed software only modulation to go alongside its tuners, meaning that its RF tuners could be developed and built into a laptop motherboard, and the power of the PC processor could be harnessed to do FM, DAB, TDM-B, DVB-T, ISDB-T (both full and 1 seg) and that it would shortly have a CMMB software demodulator for China. You can bet that DVB-H and ATSC won’t be far behind and the company can drive virtually all TV and Mobile TV into a tiny dongle or motherboard chip.
But there is the overwhelming sense of muted anticipation around the show, waiting tensely for the outcome of the French DVB-H service and the contracts that will be associated with that when it finally comes to market, probably next year now.