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Handhelds Television

Bringing Free Television To Phones In America 159

Posted by kdawson from the all-upside dept.
ideonexus writes "South Korea, China, Brazil, parts of Europe, and Japan have been watching television on their phones for free since 2005, but American mobile carriers are struggling to offer clunky streaming video using Qualcomm's proprietary MediaFLO system for an additional monthly fee and excessive bandwidth demands. Now, with America having gone digital in June, if Mobile carriers were to have ATSC M/H (advanced television systems committee — mobile/handheld) television-tuner chips built into their handsets it sounds like we could enjoy free TV on our cell phones too; however, these companies have already invested a great deal of money adapting their networks to Qualcomm's format and Qualcomm is considering becoming a mobile television distributor itself."
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Bringing Free Television To Phones In America More

Bringing Free Television To Phones In America

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  • Dollars and nonsense. (Score:3, Informative)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @05:11PM (#30660690)

    Let's see... as non-cellphone devices, FLO TV costs $250 for the 7-inch LCD TV at Best Buy, and then you get 6 months free after which you pay about $15/month.

    An ATSC-based portable LCD of the same size costs $100 at Best Buy, and of course has no monthly fees because ATSC is broadcast in the clear.

    Now, the FLO TV product has an advantage because what you're paying for isn't just the broadcast networks, but also a few "basic cable" channels such as ESPN, CNN, CNBC, Nick, and Comedy Central. It's a case of you get what you pay for.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The article claims it costs US carriers $240/hour to stream live TV to a user, per user! And yet they charge $15/month ... SOMEBODY is lying

  • Seeing it's taking forever to get FM radio added to the iPhone, why would they want to put in a digital TV tuner of either kind? FLO TV has a prototype of an add-on device that could use the iPhone as a screen... but it's a mess of a brick bigger than the iPhone. ATSC TV on the iPhone seems kind of pointless when you can buy a $100 TV that comes with its own 7-inch screen.

    • Re:Dedicated devices do it better. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @05:27PM (#30660934) Homepage

      Only because apple does not want to add it. Nokia phones have had FM radio WITH RDS forever.

      Honestly, just because the iPhone does not have it does not mean that others dont have it, or have had it a long time already.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EzInKy ( 115248 )

        Only because apple does not want to add it. Nokia phones have had FM radio WITH RDS forever.

        Honestly, just because the iPhone does not have it does not mean that others dont have it, or have had it a long time already.

        My thoughts exactly. I was shocked to learn just now that iPhone doesn't have FM radio. Certainly though it must have some system built into it to receive off the air broadcasts so its users can keep abreast of important local news, right?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by jameskojiro ( 705701 )

          FM Radio, there is NO App for that.....

          • Well, CBS Radio and Clear Channel both have streaming radio apps. I've got to wonder if an HD Radio chip in the iPhone would get most of that traffic off of AT&T's network...
        • Shocked? Really? People that aren't stuck in certain work environments still listen to FM radio? Now I am shocked!

          • Yes, maybe you are shocked, but me and my wife agreed to remove TVs from our home. We found that TVs started to waste our time too much, and all we were watching were junky TV shows which had near-to-zero value on us anyway.

            Instead, now we listen to FM radio. At least, we can do something more productive while listening to the radio.

            And somehow, I am wasting my 'productive' time writing comments on Slashdot. Great.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EzInKy ( 115248 )

            NPR for me, but really aren't the benefits of such a feature in smart communication devices pretty obvious? Personally I think it should be mandatory that all radio devices should be able to tune to local public information stations in the event of an emergency.

            • Point taken.

              I'm not arguing the emergency thing...but in a non-emergency I can listen to a preposterous number of NPR stations from around the country.
      • From what i've read, the iPod Touch's radio chip includes an FM tuner. Perhaps the iPhone does too?

        Now, as to whether it's for hardware or software reason's its not functional (or if if even exists), contact Apple.

    • That's hilarious! My wife got a new LG Chocolate Touch for Christmas and IT has an FM radio built into it!

    • They don't have to put it on the iPhone. They are talking about FUTURE phones, not YOUR phone.

      We don't all own an iphone. Matter of fact, my HTC Touch Pro is way better than an iPhone. If we were hanging out together in person we could compare and I could show you why.

      There are other phones out there, you know. I really hope the concept of the mobile pc doesn't go the way of the Kleenex --- where everyone calls a face tissue a kleenex --- where everyone calls a mobile pc phone an iphone.... eeeewww.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheSync ( 5291 )

        They don't have to put it on the iPhone.

        But it will be on your iPhone. ATSC-M/H is an IP based system, and there will be a device called Tivit [cnet.com] that will receive an ATSC-M/H IP stream, and rebroadcast it over WiFi to your iPhone, Touch, PC, etc.

  • Why not? We already have hundreds of channels of "high def" cable TV that's usually 480p and so compressed that it looks like hammered sh**. It'll probably look better on a cell phone where fine detail can't be picked up.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by InsaneProcessor ( 869563 )
      You must be watching AT&T Uverse.

  • I see... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Monkeedude1212 ( 1560403 ) on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @05:24PM (#30660904) Journal

    South Korea, China, [...] and Japan

    So all the countries that have excess Anime... Makes sense! Smaller file size and faster streaming after compressing the video to use only an 8 bit colour-stream, which hardly ruins the cartoon!

    I'm kidding. Of course. Calm down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rayonic ( 462789 )

      Not to mention the low framecount making the compression even better! Heck, they probably use an animated gif with some kind of synchronized audio.

  • South Korea, China, Brazil, parts of Europe, and Japan have been watching television on their phones for free since 2005 which hasn't improved their driving at all!

  • Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chaffed ( 672859 ) on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @05:32PM (#30660998) Homepage

    There's nothing worth watching.

  • Just because it's Qualcomm... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zigurd ( 3528 ) on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @05:42PM (#30661108) Homepage

    MediaFLO isn't "clunky." The FLO part stands for "Forward Link Only." That means it uses a broadcast channel downstream, so it is bandwidth-efficient for one-way content delivery. It is a Qualcomm proprietary technology, but it is not inherently less good than other DTV technologies applicable to mobile devices. MediaFLO was designed for mobile devices, so it might have advantages over some DTV standards that were not designed with mobile devices in mind.

    • Most standard portable TV products say to receive signal they must be stationary because any movement results in packet loss. FLO TV solves this problem simply with redundant packets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kizeh ( 71312 )

      Whatever happened to IP multicast? Quite well suited for TV streaming across any number of platforms, and as a transport layer it doesn't get much more universally standardized and accepted than that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zigurd ( 3528 )

        IP multicast would not help the last-mile issue in using mobile data for TV. MediaFLO has dedicated bandwidth for nearly all the downstream payload.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kizeh ( 71312 )

          Using IP multicast only the streams that have subscribers in a given cell get streamed to that cell, and then within the cell get distributed to subscribers. QoS should be fairly trivial as the multicast stream is obviously streaming TV content. If reserved bandwidth is needed, policing can be done preventing excess users from subscribing to a stream. Trying to mimic circuit-switched reserved bandwidth chunks over a natively packet based media always strikes me as silly.

  • The only thing more saddening about the US being so far behind on this stuff is the fact that here in Canada, we'll be even one or two years behind them. Probably thanks to CRTC bureaucracy and bilingual nonsense. And once we get it, there will be nothing on except CBC, because the US programming that we all want to see will be roadblocked by licensing restrictions in Canada. Just like hulu, pandora, etc...

    Bottom line: in 4 years we'll be lucky enough to watch low-res, DRM'd "Beachcomber" reruns on our

  • It won't be wide spread because Free-TV in cell phones is lost revenue for phone companies. Why would they promote a device with a receiver in it that provides a service they may sell (VCAST style services or extra bandwidth charges)?

    • Why would they promote a device with a receiver in it that provides a service they may sell

      Oh the US providers would LOVE it provided that they could lock it out and charge extra to use it.

  • antenna strength? in some area you need good signal to get tv and channel 2 HD use to be real bad with that in the past.

  • In America, boradband providers only offer additional services if they can charge you for it. This "free" word you speak of will not be recognized by the American cell providers.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Culture20 ( 968837 )

      In America, boradband providers only offer additional services if they can charge you for it. This "free" word you speak of will not be recognized by the American cell providers.

      But it's not their call. If I buy a nokia ATSC enabled phone, and I tune to a local HD channel, I'll get television. Unless I buy the phone from a cell company who removes that functionality and renables it for a monthly fee, there's nothing they can do about it.

      • Too bad about 999 out of 1000 Americans who have cell phones bought theirs from a cellphone company, and most of the carriers do cripple their handsets (especially ones that rhyme with Blurizon).

        • Too bad about 999 out of 1000 Americans who have cell phones bought theirs from a cellphone company, and most of the carriers do cripple their handsets (especially ones that rhyme with Blurizon).

          All it takes are a few geeks to show the benefits of buying direct from manufacturer "Look, I get TV, but you don't!" and people will clamor. On my local TV news this morning, they had a spot for google's new phone, and the one thing they kept talking about was this strange concept of "unlocked" and what it meant. The anchors chatted amongst themselves afterward about how innovative the idea of freely moving your phone from one cell company to another was. Regular folk are waking up on the cell phone fro

  • Do we need another distraction? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @06:15PM (#30661626)

    "South Korea, China, Brazil, parts of Europe, and Japan have been watching television on their phones for free since 2005...

    Er, I'm wondering how many of those countries have the numbers the US does, using these devices while attempting to steer 2 tons of steel down a freeway at 60MPH with 60,000 of their closest friends riding bumper to bumper? Somehow, I think the last thing we need is another visual distraction on a cell phone.

    Perhaps this is one of those features that we don't go all Lemming over. Never really understood the fascination of browsing the web or watching video on a tiny-ass screen. The "because I can" cool factor usually wears off after about 20 minutes, or when you battery prematurely dies, whichever comes first.

    • Never really understood the fascination of browsing the web or watching video on a tiny-ass screen.

      Fine, it's not for you. But it amazes me that I can (as a passenger, of course) be in a car going down the freeway and still browse the web to search for something (e.g. find an answer to something we were talking about, etc.). While you definitely do do a lot of zooming & pinching on the screen, I think such "tiny-ass screens" can be amazingly useful. (Disclaimer: I have a work provided phone and I p

    • Sit on a bus, subway, train, back seat for 20-60 minutes, and you'll discover just how convenient it is having mobile browsing, or video, or games, or whatever in your pocket.

  • Flash (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @06:17PM (#30661640) Homepage Journal

    I thought some have suggested this was a big reason why Flash has been ported to other platforms, but isn't on the iPhone. AT&T has publicly said it, but there are theories AT&T is terrified of what would happen to data usage if you could stream video to the iPhone via Flash from any number of sites.

    Not to mention it would hurt iTunes video sales to the same devices.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Doesn't Flash fall under the no-scripting-languages-allowed rubric? Or since Apple controls the browser this doesn't matter?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      thought some have suggested this was a big reason why Flash has been ported to other platforms, but isn't on the iPhone.

      There is no flash on the iphone because Apple cant control what you do with flash. There really is no other reason, it's the same with mulit-tasking, the HW and SW are perfectly capable but are artificially locked in order to gain greater control.

      • Flash kills cpu and thus battery life. It's a fact. I really doubt it's some sinister plot by Apple. They can't control what you do with a web browser either, and they don't care.

        Hell, they even approved the Rhapsody app. In case you didn't notice, Rhapsody competes directly with iTunes.

  • So now we get to overhear 'lowest-common-denominator-TV' addicted assholes actually watching their shows, like "The Hills," and "Jersey Shore," in public, on the train, at the grocery store? Kill me now.

    Sports fans foaming at the mouth and screaming over some perfect or missed play...

    Idiots trying to watch TV and drive (I was kidding a bit before, but this is the one that really scares me).

    Don't get me wrong, I love technology and can see certain times where this might be interesting, and I am all for perso

  • Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:26:53 +0000 (UTC)

    Thank you for ordering from Target.com.

    The following items were included in this shipment:

    1 Digital Labs 7" Portable D $49.99 1 $49.99

    Item Subtotal: $49.99
    Shipping: $6.92

    • You caught a pre-holiday sale that isn't available right now. Still... It does show how these things are getting better and cheaper constantly.

  • The article says: "the “V Cast” and “Mobile TV” television services offered by Verizon and AT&T respectively are streamed jerkily across their cellular networks."

    This is false, This article is very misleading. V-Cast TV and AT&T Mobile TV are Qualcomm's MediaFLO service re-branded. These are broadcast-quality digital signals that come over what previously was the Analog TV channel 55. These are NOT streamed, and are completely separate from the Cellular network. See the Media

    • They are both ip based , which is evident on the bill , if you ever screw up and use it on a phone without the data plan.

      • No, they are NOT IP based. The only thing that goes over the IP network is the billing and decryption key exchange.

        FLO TV / VCast TV/ AT&T Mobile TV is an encoded digital signal that goes out over UHF. I have personally toured FLO TV's headquarters, am friends with employees that work there, and know what I'm talking about. The TV signals are taken from the network feeds and encoded at FLO TV's San Diego headquarters, then transmitted out to dual satellite uplinks. The transmitters in in the local

  • TFA mentions ATSC M/H because the actual ATSC specification performs relatively poorly in the face of doppler and dynamic multipath. ATSC works just fine if you put up a proper outdoor antenna, but if you just use the whip antenna built into a portable TV, it sucks.

    P.s. I am one of the only /.ers who owns and operates his own ATSC transmitter [n6qqq.org]. It should be installed and operational sometime this month (yes, it's a bit late).

  • Mind you, I'm not knocking all smartphones, I myself own an iphone (which I have mixed feelings towards). But the unfortunate trend for the last couple of years in the US has been to focus on feature rich phones while doing little to improve the call quality, which is the primary function of the device. Worse yet, all the basic cell phone plans are more expensive now just to subsidize the smart phones sold under contract now. I am an iphone owner, but I am considering just getting a basic cell phone that

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nsayer ( 86181 )

      So, apart from improving network bandwidth and availability (which I will concede is needed), in what way would you improve call quality?

      In other words, are you asking for more than simply insuring that enough data flows in and out of the phone so that the caller doesn't sound like Charlie Brown's teacher?

      • I think you nailed the biggest ones. My biggest gripes are dropped calls and weak signals in NYC, and no signal in areas where other phones on the same carrier get a signal. Granted I realize part of the problem is the phone, and the other the network.

    • If you don't use many minutes, you don't need a "plan" at all. Just get a prepaid phone..

      http://www.cellguru.net/prepaid_compare.htm [cellguru.net]

      • Unfortunately I use enough minutes where it is probably worth it to have a plan. Most of the prepaids suffer from many of the problems I described in my last post too.
  • I don't watch HD TV for free on my 50" LCD, why would I watch crappy quality for a fee (any fee) on a mobile phone?

    • And you are the only person in the universe. If you wouldn't want something then why would anyone!

  • Non-idiot here... (Score:3, Informative)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @12:35AM (#30665650) Journal

    I've heard enough from the peanut gallery now... The non-stop bickering about trivialities is getting pretty damn old, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Here's a lolipop, go away little children, and let the adults talk.

    Is Europe, DVB-H had been promoted for literally decades as the thing that was going to change the world... EVERYTHING was going to have a TV on it, cell phones most of all.

    Fast forward to the modern day, with cell phone manufacturers having disputes with broadcasters over DVB-H fees, one just went ahead and built a full DVB-T receiver into their cell phones. It was a stunning development. Sure, it used a bit more power, but now you could watch REAL TV programs, not just the niche "mobile" broadcasts that you were supposed to want to watch on your cell phone. Of course broadcasters were put in their place by this move, and DVB-H fees have become more reasonable, and there's an effort to get real content out there. But either way, the proverbial cat is out of the bag, and people now want "real TV" on their cell phones, and a large number of them get just that these days, for a fairly small premium...

    Of course ATSC in the US is much more complex than DVB-T in Europe, but never the less, you certainly can still find a handheld TV for under $100 http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/541548/Digital-Prism-ATSC-300-3-5/ [officedepot.com]

    So, it's only a question of time. Give it another year, and your smart phones will receive OTA broadcasts, for free. Sure, they might also support the premium in-network TV-like data system, but nobody will want it, and the niche audience won't be large enough to support the effort. And it'll go the way of the MPEG-1 D-Frames, and the "PDA Internet", as do all poorly thought-out kludges that are only stop-gaps for temporarily resource-starved platforms that can't yet play with the big boys.

    That is all. You may now return to your endless and pointless bickering about whether or not it's worthwhile to buy a subsidized cell phone...

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