Mobile TV is BACK: Ericsson launches broadcast video for 4G

Broadcast mobile TV is back again, this time on Verizon's 4G network with better quality than ever, because it's obviously merely inferior technology which has prevented the success of mobile broadcasting in the past. Ericsson is going large at Mobile World Congress. It is now the largest provider of mobile infrastructure …

[James 51]

just want NetFlix to work properly

Or lovefilm. It bugs me that Amazon have released the streaming app only for the fire. I won't buy a fire for that and when netflix get round to releasing a streaming app for the playbook it will be time to jump ship.

[Dropper]

Re: just want NetFlix to work properly

"It bugs me that Amazon have released the streaming app only for the fire".

You know what's even more annoying than that.. the fact their streaming app is available for iOS too. In fact the only devices you can't use to stream Amazon video are Android phones and tablets that aren't Kindle Fires.

Shit you can get Amazon streaming apps on consoles and Blu-Ray players.

[James 51]

Re: just want NetFlix to work properly

I didn't realise that they had it for iOS but I don't have a i(phone/pad). If they had one on the android market place at least I could recompile it to a .bar.

[a well wisher]

" But Verizon and Ericsson reckon mobile users will forgo the convenience of being able to control playback for the increased network efficiency made possible by Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service."

Surely the major benefit of using 'multicast' accrue to the operator rather that the end user

[JetSetJim]

use case

it'll work for any major live event - like important games of US football and other such essential viewing in N America.

It won't work for stuff like regular TV series unless the network operator gets an exclusive and they can figure out a way to cripple the phone to ensure it doesn't get recorded at the same time (I presume there are video-screen-grabbers available for at least Android)

[Mage]

Been here before

DVB-H?

Qualcomm's TV?

What advantage does it give over sticking in a DVB-T2 chip?

Will people pay?

We had quite good real Broadcast technologies before for phones. But I suspect unless it's free no-one wants it.

Coverage?

Ordinary Mobile varies the QAM and data rate as signal gets poorer to give about x8 the range of the fastest data but at slow speed. To get 8x range from fixed speed broadcast you either have to have x64 the power or 1/70th the program / data / channel capacity.

[James Delaney]

Would hate to get a call and miss a good bit

I can't imagine people wanting to stream live content very often but on a small scale that sounds interesting.

Switching between live driver cams/channels on your smartphone when at the F1?

[Jon Press]

Makes perfect sense

Since all the terrestrial TV spectrum is being swiped for mobile telphony, what better solution than to use the new spectrum to, er, terrestrially broadcast TV.

[MJI]

4G = TV frequencies

So why not just add a TV tuner instead?

[Mage]

Re: 4G = TV frequencies

Done already years ago.

Never took off in Europe, only much marketed in Germany, but popular in Asia.

[Tom 35]

Re: 4G = TV frequencies

Add that the Operators don't make any money from a free broadcast TV tuner.

[Don Jefe]

Broadcast

If it is broadcast on a schedule does this actually make it TV and make advertisers have to comply with those regs?

[Benjamin 4]

Why? Just why?

The rest of the world is movining away from broadcast TV towards streaming so lets invent a new broadcast standard on a platform where broadcast TV has never worked?

Though frankly all mobile TV apps (live and streaming seem to be a bit crap). Even the iPlayer mobile app has atrocious quality, though accessing the desktop site improves quality tremendously.

[Azzy]

This ain't gonna fly...

Might get some niche use for major live events... but for the most part, people using mobile devices are not going to be interested in watching something that runs at a scheduled time with no pause/rewind/skip - they're used to doing that with video on the same device; any service that doesn't let them do that will seem antiquated by comparison.

I'm sure the operators wish this would take off, but the viewing experience is just all around worse from the consumer's perspective.

[Ron Christian]

fail

Sorry, our expectations have been set -- watch what we want, when we want it. Gone are the days where we all huddled around the TV eating our dinner on TV trays and watched whatever is on, holding our bladders for the next commercial break. That is so generation-before-last. It's way too late to train users to go back to that paradigm.

It should have been apparent that video on demand would increase network usage, but the attempts to build out for that have been inadequate. A possible compromise might be to spool selected content to the device to be viewed later, if the DRM details could be worked out. But broadcast TV? The time has passed.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

pause/rewind/skip

So they've never heard of local buffering? They're probably sending 2Mbps - not a big deal to dump into flash.

[John Tserkezis]

Everyone seems to have forgotten...

...that charging money to watch TV on a two-inch screen is destined for failure.

[LinkOfHyrule]

LOLCATZ TEEVEEZ

Plonk a 24 hour stream of the current top 50 cat videos doing the rounds on there and it will be basically be Youtube.