More on Cell Phone TVs
Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines
Or when you think you're gonna die
Or did you long for the next distraction?
Alanis Morissette
Good article in MIT's Technology Review by Eric Brown about mobile television (external link). Texas Instruments and Qualcomm are both producing chipsets to enable television. Qualcomm has even partnered with another company to found the so called MediaFLO network to deliver content using push technology. Video gets sent to your phone when you're not using it, then you can retrieve what you want to see later. But push and every cache based method hasn't be well received on the internet and I don't see a reason why it should be here. TIVO uses push in a way but that is a high quality product. Will mobile users sit through hours old content that is jittery, slow framed, and often disconnected? Here's the concluding paragraph to the article:
"In short, don't be fooled by the mobile hype --cell phone users may move around a lot, but at the end of the day they still veg out at home or in a hotel room watching a nice big TV (or big laptop monitor). Which brings us back to the size question. Two-inch handheld TVs have gotten dramatically better in recent years, and the digital technology from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and others is likely to be even better. Yet, even if the resolution and frame rate improve, size matters in the TV illusion. At two inches, details are still difficult to make out, and it's a hassle to have to sit and hold your TV in your hand. Even with a 3-inch screen (about the biggest that's feasible on a phone), people will watch it when the need arises, but it's less likely they'll be hypnotized. That may be good for our souls, but not so good for the TV business."
Qualcomm is said to have purchased in 2003 the rights to spectrum currently occupied by UHF-TV channel 55 throughout the entire nation. That may let their scheme succeed.