MOBILE TELEVISION

With MP3 audio, cameras, video and FM radio already commonplace, TV is the last form of media not yet common on mobile phones. Mobile TV is also very relevant to automotive and PMP devices, notebook PCs, and for UMPC and MID devices.

The Japanese mobile TV market is booming with well over 10 million handsets expected to ship in 2007; the Korean market too is growing quickly, with over five million users expected by the end of 2007.

Digital mobile TV is radically different from analogue mobile TV technologies, none of which ever made significant market penetration. The reasons are simple: digital mobile TV was designed from the ground up to work with robust reception on the move; and now most people are already carrying handheld media devices or phones into which mobile TV can be added.

However there are four major global terrestrial standards, which use different modulation schemes and protocols. This means that separate receivers are normally needed to receive each standard, even if the video and audio use similar coding standards like H.264 or AAC+.

To enable products which can be used and sold worldwide we have created a unique multi-standard mobile TV platform which can support any mix of these transmission standards, as well as a growing range of digital radio standards. Our platform already fully supports DVB-H, T-DMB and 1-seg ISDB-T and we are evaluating others including MediaFLO as well as emerging Chinese standards such as CMMB.

The mobile TV market is too young to accurately forecast, but commercially launched broadcast networks are growing from nine in 2006 to 13 in 2007. Screen Digest forecasts 140 million global subscribers by 2011, and some OEMs predict much more.

 Mobile TV IP Solutions Factsheet