In what is another great non-announcement for mobile TV in the US, the OMVC ‘ the organization that is behind the new ATSC M/H mobile broadcast standard – says it will invite equipment vendors into its membership. Right now it needs all the momentum it can muster, since it constantly drifts out of the media eye. In our view ATSC M/H is the right way for cellular operators to go in delivering TV services to handsets, not streaming, but someone has to convince a US cellular operator of that soon, or the movement risks getting stale. If this is the most exciting announcement out of CES on mobile TV, then we will begin to worry.
New vendor members include the already committed Dell, Harris, LG Electronics, and Samsung. LG and Samsung originally developed the technology.
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer spent most of his keynote at CES talking about the 8 million Kinect devices that have shipped in the last 60 days, a real, and in this case, expected success, from a company that has been short on them of late. But another news item that is still widely expected to emerge from CES is a Windows-powered set top box, taking on Google TV and Apple TV. It was expected in the keynote but never came. Not too surprising, why show a box that is third to a market that hasn’t yet quite taken off, when you have the best Xbox Christmas on record, through Kinect.
Google may be planning a dual-track strategy for Android tablets, with version 3.0 Honeycomb aimed at the high end running dual-core CPUs and high res screens and the existing Gingerbread version for low end products. Samsung was so frustrated at their slow arrival that it went with the Froyo release for its Galaxy Tab, opting for a 7 inch screen as much because the larger screens really need Honeycomb, as to differentiate it. Bobby Cha, managing director of Korean CE firm Enspert, told PC Magazine Honeycomb needs at least a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor (like the Nvidia Tegra2 or the new Freescale platform). This would mean many current tablets would not be upgradeable to Honeycomb, as they will lack the processor power needed – which would explain why many firms, such as LG and Lenovo, have said they will wait for Honeycomb to launch tablets.
UK researcher Juniper says that advertising in mobile games will rocket to almost $900 million by 2015, a rise of ten times what it is today, from $87 million in 2010. This will be driven by increasing brand interest in mobile as an advertising channel, and apps ‘ of which games are the dominant sector. The report says that games like Rovio’s Angry Birds are making a significant impact using in-game ads. Systems like Apple’s iAd will also begin to make a difference, which helps manage in-application advertising. Juniper says that games are being successfully deployed as marketing tools by brands, such as, Barclaycard and Volkswagen, providing new revenue opportunities for developers, such as Fishlabs and Firemint.
Funai Electric and ActiveVideo Networks said this week they will offer interactive TV services on Funai devices. Funai makes Philips, Emerson, Magnavox and Sylvania brand televisions and Blu-ray players. Under the agreement, Funai will integrate ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform into selected TV sets and Blu-ray models. ActiveVideo’s CloudTV leverages content stored and processed on the internet and delivered as a single, adaptable MPEG stream to the CE device, which uses an existing remote control to navigate the content. This approach, not dissimilar to that of TiVo, eliminates the need for tons of processing on the TV set, converting different formats and resolutions on the fly.
So it’s almost time to say goodbye to the In-Stat brand of technology market research, which is in the process of being acquired by NPD in the US, the company that also owns DisplaySearch. NPD usually slowly replaces acquired brands with its own. In-Stat focuses on mobile and digital entertainment and its latest research this week says that global unit shipments of DVRs have set a new record in 2009, and are expected to eclipse that in 2010 moving onto 50 million annual shipments by 2014. In-Stat persistently calls them PVRs and says that worldwide revenues in 2010 will grow by $1.2 billion over last year’s revenue level and says that in 2009 Motorola was the leading PVR manufacturer with over 4.9 million units shipped.
NPD itself has come out with research into connected TVs and reports that 45% of consumers who have an Internet-connected TV actually access the Internet features. That’s a horribly low number, perhaps they should have interviewed their kids, then perhaps they would find that 100% are using it all the time when Mom’s out. Some 57% say they are very satisfied with the TV’s Internet features, so they couldn’t have interviewed many Google TV owners then. But NPD warns that manufacturers are adding these facilities and under-selling them, and that the big problem is that they haven’t included WiFi. NPD also found that 57% are using the connected TVs to access Netflix and 47% to watch YouTube.
Broadband TV News says that French TV transmission network TDF and mobile operator Virgin have put off the launch of their planned Mobile TV service. It turns out that TDF no longer wants to build it using DVB-H and Virgin is wary (it once backed a service in the UK using DAB-IP which failed miserably ‘ though that’s a different company now). TDF is looking for a different technology from DVB-H or cellular streaming but says that DVB-SH (the Alcatel satellite version of DVB-H) and MediaFLO, are all out of the picture and politically China’s CMMB would be difficult to swallow. How about IMB then? We thought the CSA license was granted on the understanding that DVB-H was used?
Israeli mobile TV chip maker Siano says it has worked with US based iMovee to launch Mobeo, an advanced wireless pocket streamer that enables broadcast mobile TV on any WiFi enabled device, smartphone or tablet. The idea is to take all existing digital TV formats and convert them to WiFi for existing phones. The Mobeo line of products will begin with ATSC-M/H for the US, ISDB-T for Latin America, DVB-T for Europe and later more formats will be added. Siano has existing chips that can receive all of those formats and the two will target operators who are shipping devices using Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and the new Microsoft Windows Phone 7. So that will be all of them. The Mobeo device is said to have a battery life of 4 hours.
UK radio chip specialist Mirics which offers cheap radios for PCs with software that can demodulate TV signals, called FlexiTV, says it will partner with Taiwanese ODM DigiBest Technology to begin shipping a verison of FlexiTV for ATSC broadcasts. ATSC is used in the US, Canada and Mexico. DigiBest is already supplying FlexiTV based products in Japan and Latin America offering ISDB-T demodulation.
Discovery is kicking up a fuss about the Dish Network offering its programs using its TV Everywhere concept, says Interactive TV Today, saying that it has not granted Dish the right to distribute its programming service over the Internet. Its TV Everywhere service of course allows a customer to Sling its programming, using Placeshifting, to wherever the user is. Dish is simply providing the technology and has nothing to do with the actual sending over the internet. Placeshifting has never been tested in a court of law, but is widely thought to be unlikely to succumb to a legal challenge. Now Discovery has filed with the FCC to get it stopped. Just not gonna happen.
IP Wireless, the UK specialist in TDD for 3G cellular networks says that it has an IMB accessory for taking a broadcast cellular video signal and translating it for any WiFi device, such as an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad. IMB is the Integrated Mobile Broadcasting which works right alongside unicast video services in cellular and shifts some of them into TDD spectrum as a broadcast, and last year it became a GSMA backed standard. These new devices will be trialed in the UK where there is already an IMB trial. The new device uses the IP Wireless defined chip and software from French company Streammezzo, now owned by Amdocs. IP Wireless says IMB will be capable of broadcasting to an unlimited number of devices and will use up no 3G voice capacity.
UK set top company Amino has taken its Freedom set top and spun out something it calls The Freedom Jump, which is a ‘companion’ set top box which attaches to existing set tops to add OTT capabilities. It uses the Intel Atom CE4100 and MeeGo operating system and was announced at CES and will work with satellite and cable boxes, offering content from the open Internet, TV applications, movie-on-demand services, catch-up TV, music services and social networking. It supports most common Internet formats including Adobe Flash video and goes up to 1080p resolution, all linked through an HDMI input to the existing service provider’s set top.
A financial group in the US, the Jesta Group, bought the Fox Mobile Group in December from News Corp. In the past this has acquired start-ups Jamba, Jamster, Mobizzo, iLove and Bitbop. The group will be renamed and become a part of Jesta Mobile Holdings, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and Beverly Hills, California. In the past we have criticized US broadcasters for offering reduced TV formats for mobile TV, and creating a specialist mobile service, instead of allowing full programming to go mobile. It seems that Fox is finally seeing the same picture.
Harris said this week at CES that Post-Newsweek Stations, which owns six US TV stations, has selected Harris MPH ATSC Mobile DTV systems for Detroit and Orlando, Florida. It’s important that more and more TV stations are convinced of the value of Mobile DTV ‘ using the mobile broadcast version of ASTC ‘ if mobile TV is to take off in the US. The WDIV channel launched first with a single mobile channel, simulcasting its primary over-the-air channel, and WKMG has followed with a similar launch. Both systems used existing Harris transmitters, and it says it will roll out more Harris MPH systems at its four remaining stations.