Big Five Set Their Sights On Mobile TV
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TV broadcasts to the mobile phone moved a step nearer reality today when the big five handset vendors announced a co-operation deal to investigate mobile broadcast services.
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InfoWorld - Questions filled the air Monday as the mobile industry geared up for one of its biggest U.S. trade shows on Monday by focusing on entertainment.
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Tech giants set to launch TV, print, cinema and online ad campaign to market the digital lifestyle.
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Hollywood is quickly expanding into   wireless entertainment, but challenges remain before mobile   phones reach their potential as powerful media platforms,   industry executives said on Wednesday.
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The mobile phone industry has been  predicting for years that the future of television is wireless.
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The big media companies aren't looking at just the Web for new viewers and more advertising revenue. Increasingly, they are turning to mobile devices, and with mixed results.
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What might your mobile future look like? Sitting at the airport, you pull out a laptop or personal digital assistant and watch TV, delivered through Wi-Fi. Perhaps you'll grab an MP3 player instead, but rather than listen to downloaded tunes, you check out Internet radio. Or maybe you'll just make a call but thanks to the headset into which you are speaking, the person at the other end can make out your voice and not the blur of jet engines taking off at the same time.Each scenario is already possible, as evidenced last week in La Jolla, Calif., during the sixth annual DemoMobile conference. The gathering is a showcase for promising wireless technologies targeted at people on the go. Three dozen companies participated, many start-ups, representing more than &#36;142 million in cumulative venture funding.Consider the scope: Luxembourg's Skype Technologies demonstrated free software that lets consumers make voice calls over a Wi-Fi-capable Pocket PC.Handmark of Kansas City, Mo., showed off Pocket Express, a wireless information service for smart phones. If a phone has "location-based" capabilities, Handmark can provide listings of nearby restaurants or theaters, and map the fastest route to that spot.Xora in Mountain View, Calif., lets companies track the whereabouts of mobile employees via its GPS TimeTrack offering. And EverNote in Sunnyvale, Calif., has software that lets someone organize notes on a PC, then synchronize them with portable devices.OurPictures unveiled the OurPictures Mobile service. With a single click, consumers can send photos taken with a camera phone to designated PCs, TVs, printers or a local photo processor. And games publisher Sorrent showed off a new way to punch in your vote: its Bush vs. Kerry Boxing cell phone game. The results of every Bush/Kerry rumble on every portable phone are scored on a pugilist poll posted at Sorrent's site; as of Wednesday, Kerry was out-pointing Bush by about 2,350 votes. Other would-be knockouts:&#8226;Couch computing. The &#36;800, 2.3-pound wireless Pepper Pad 2 from Pepper Computer in Lexington, Mass., lets you browse the Web, do e-mail, play videos and games and more. Due in January, it has an 8.4-inch display, Bluetooth, an SD card slot and 20 GB hard drive. It also has a directional game pad and small lighted qwerty keypad that is split so that half flanks the left side of the screen and half, the right.&#8226;Making a motion. Synaptics is behind the track-wheel on Apple's iPods and the touchpads on several notebook PCs. The new MobileTouch platform is Synaptics' foray into cell phones. You'll be able to scribble on the screen or scroll by using your fingers to lightly make small gestures across a keypad (or other interface), just as you do with a touchpad. I was wowed even more by technology out of Oulu, Finland, where F-Origin originated a "motion control solution" called Iris. Consumers using a phone or computer with F-Origin's software will be able to control the orientation of the screen by merely tilting and moving the device. What you see on the display corresponds to the angle in which you rotate the gizmo. F-Origin takes advantage of gravity sensors.&#8226;That's (mobile) entertainment. ViewSonic's new Wireless Media Gateway and Wireless Media Adapter (&#36;799 packaged together, and coming later in the year) represent the company's move into wireless networking. The product line is designed to deliver digital videos, music and pictures to any monitor or TV in the house, at better-than-DVD quality. The company says it can stream video to a single TV at up to 10 megabits per second or two different streams at 5 megabits. You can also print from the gateway devices and take advantage of 80 or 120 GB storage capacities.Watching TV on a handheld is the idea behind WiFi-TV from OnAir Entertainment in Sunnyvale, Calif. OnAir is working with hot-spot providers to deliver TV or video-on-demand at public places. Consumers can access an interactive programming guide and pause live TV. OnAir is conducting a free trial at the Austin airport, though the company expects people to eventually pay about &#36;5 for a day pass.Meanwhile, another Silicon Valley start-up, AudioFeast, is focusing on Internet radio for portable music players. Its virtual broadcasting network delivers refreshed content from A &amp; E, BBC Radio, NPR and Sporting News Radio, among others. You download software onto your computer, then choose the channels you want to sync with a compatible MP3 player. A one-year AudioFeast subscription costs &#36;50. Contact my phone. Is there anything more tedious than entering hundreds of phone numbers into a phone? Palo Alto, Calif.-based Vazu has come up with a suite of services that lets you automatically transmit selected contacts, as well as such Web data as driving directions or movie schedules, to a phone. Vazu's Internet Explorer plug-in places a small "V" icon next to a phone number on a Web page. When you click on the icon, the contact name and number are sent to your phone. What's more, users of Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail and Linux Evolution can dispatch contacts via Vazu to their phone's address book. Lose a phone? Vazu can serve as a backup to your data. &#8226;Now hear this. Logitech, Plantronics and Aliph submitted headsets for a Sound Off challenge voted on by conference attendees. The winner was Aliph's Jawbone, based on military-grade technology. To prove that this funky-looking &#36;150 "adaptive" headset can suppress background noises while keeping a caller's voice audible, Aliph conducted a crowd-pleasing experiment. First a caller had a noisy blender behind him. When Jawbone's technology was applied, the person could be heard clearly, not the blender. Aliph successfully repeated the exercise with a boombox. The coup de gr&#226;ce: The caller could be heard over a weed whacker. It is made possible by a sensor that feels vibrations on your cheek. Jawbone works with phones from Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.&#8226;Mobile marketing. Intrigued by the Armani, Gap or Toyota ads in the September issue of Jane? Snap a picture and e-mail images to the magazine. You'll get back text messages with tailored promotional offers. It's part of a promotion based on technology from conference demonstrator Mobot.The Waltham, Mass., company was but one demonstrator to give a hint where mobile marketing is heading. MediaTile of Scotts Valley, Calif., delivers point-of-sale digital signs. Digimarc in Tualatin, Ore., places invisible digital watermarks into banner ads. When a consumer takes a picture of, say, a movie ad, they might see a trailer on the phone or directions to the nearest theater. Another demonstrator, DRM Labs of Dallas, uses text messages to send digital coupons called Voupons. For these schemes to pan out, consumers must "opt-in; privacy must be respected."This is just the tip of the iceberg for many of the companies exhibiting at DemoMobile. Indeed, I expect to explore some of these technologies in future coverage. After all, what could be more mobile than the pace of change?E-mail ebaig@usatoday.com
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Not just another channel for broadcasters Traditional broadcasters need to understand that mobile TV is not just another channel but must be used differently if they are to get to grips with the new market.â¦
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Asia is set to overtake Europe&#39;s  early lead in adopting mobile television broadcasting as Europe  struggles to find available airwaves for broadcasts, industry  executives at an Asian trade fair said this week.
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In case music, games, and video weren't enough, vendors are now vying for the opportunity to send digital television signals to your mobile phones.
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ESPN, CBS, and Fox will be bringing full-length NCAA football bowl games to Verizon Wireless VCAST TV this month and next. Now fans can argue over who's really #1 on their small screens just as easily as on the big ones.
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Several companies move toward offering TV on mobile phones. Also: NDS, STMicroelectronics and Thomson will develop anti-piracy technology & hellip;. Oracle continues pursuit of PeopleSoft & hellip;. and more.
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Mobile TV is emerging as the next important mobile application. Nearly  all of the 3G mobile networks globally offer Mobile TV services which  provide the ability to view video entertainment on mobile devices.
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The race is on: A consortium of 32 companies has joined a classic battle for primacy with their demonstration of mobile phones to compete with devices that will run Google Inc.'s fledgling Android operating system.
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Disney Media Networks Co-Chairman Anne  Sweeney said on Wednesday the ability to watch television on  mobile devices is a "critical" area of growth as wireless  service providers begin offering live TV services next year.
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Europeans&#39; interest in watching mobile  television is as tiny as cellphone screens, a new study showed  on Monday, even though the industry has been buzzing about  offering TV on handsets for years.
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Seven leading global mobile phone   operators said on Thursday they had formed an organization to   examine how broadband wireless technology might evolve beyond   current 3G standards.