What is Mobile Television?

Mobile television usually means television watched on a small handheld device. It may be a pay TV service broadcast on mobile phone networks or received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations from either regular broadcast or a special mobile TV transmission format. Some mobile televisions can also download television shows from the internet, including recorded TV programs and podcasts which are downloaded and stored on the mobile device for later viewing.

Broadcast Mobile TV platforms:

Various Mobile TV platforms have been developed globally to combat issues of mobile device reception, battery life and screen resolution.

There are three main standards:

· DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handhelds)

o An approved standard for handheld equipment by ETSI (European Telecommunications Institute) with a high adoption rate worldwide

o DVB-H is an open industry standard that was developed by the DVB Project, an industry consortium and is currently being supported by leading companies throughout the wireless industry.

· DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting)

o DMB is a digital radio transmission technology developed in South Korea as part of the national IT project for sending multimedia such as TV, radio and datacasting to mobile devices such as mobile phones.

o It can operate via satellite (S-DMB) or terrestrial (T-DMB) transmission.

· Media FLO

o MediaFLO is a technology developed by Qualcomm for transmitting audio, video and data to portable devices such as mobile phones and personal televisions, used for mobile television. In the United States, the service powered by this technology is branded as FLO TV.

o Broadcast data transmitted via MediaFLO includes live, real time audio and video streams, as well as scheduled video and audio clips and shows. The technology can also carry Internet Protocol datacast application data, such as stock market quotes, sports scores, and weather reports.