A three-way format war is looming in Europe over the technology used to deliver TV programmes, movies and other complex content to mobile phones – a market that some pundits estimate will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year worldwide.
Contenders include two proprietary systems claimed to be relatively cheap to implement. One is MediaFLO from Qualcomm, which is promising a full service in US cities by October 2006. The other is T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting), supported by LG and Samsung and backed by the Korean government.
However, the strong favourite is DVB-H - an internationally accepted open system for handhelds that is backwardly compatible with current European digital broadcast standards. DVB-H is backed by the Digital Video Broadcasting project, a consortium with around 300 members that oversees European digital broadcasting standards.
The DVB-H system – which is being pioneered strongly by German mobile phone operators, and is supported by Microsoft - is making a big splash at IBC in Amsterdam. There are displays by over 30 companies and the IBC conference devoted Saturday - one of its five days - entirely to mobile applications.
Germany’s football league is due to start DVB-H pilot schemes for a mobile football service and these are expected to lead to a much wider service available for next year’s football world cup, taking place in Germany from June next year.
However, it’s possible that there will be no single winner in this format war. The different systems have their own advantages and disadvantages and makers of telephone handsets could produce models able to receive more than one TV service.
Dual-service phones will be available in Korea where there will be competition between the forthcoming T-DMB service (created by the government agency ETRI) and the satellite-based S-DMB, which uses technology created largely by Toshiba and is already undergoing trials involving 20,000 users.
The terrestrial version should be cheaper and easier to implement and the service will be free – supported largely by advertisements, presumably. But T-DMB is a local service, rather than being nationwide like the chargeable S-DMB satellite service, with reception not necessarily available outside large cities.
For more about DVB-H at IBC, check out this press release.
