Mobile TV
The words of the
European Union's (EU)
telecoms commissioner
Viviane Reding, delivered at the
launch of DVB-H as the EU's
standard of choice for mobile TV,
should be considered a clarion
call to those broadcasters that
have delayed their long-term
commitment to this new platform,
citing the uncertainty over the
myriad of available standards.
Having provided regulatory
guidance as to the standard that
should be adopted across Europe,
the EU has given broadcasters the
opportunity to focus on the other
issues that need to be resolved
before a mass-market mobile TV
roll-out is possible.
The long-term importance of the
EU's support of DVB-H cannot be
underestimated as the whole
mobile TV market is potentially
worth more than the sum of its
parts. Any fragmentation driven by
the use of proprietary standards
would inevitably damage the
ultimate potential of the sector.
Interoperability is key - especially if
convergence is to continue to
precipitate the consolidation we
have begun to see in the broadcast
and telecoms sectors. Broadcasters
wanting to benefit from the huge
potential of mobile TV can now
address the technical and business
case issues with a major piece of
the jigsaw already in place.
Incumbent broadcasters,
especially terrestrial broadcasters,
have been under pressure from
their satellite and cable
competitors for many years and
now have added competition from
IPTV. Mobile TV is a key
opportunity for them to
differentiate themselves, as they
John Maguire outlines the technology optionsand business models available to broadcasterswanting to penetrate the mobile TV market
Wait-and-see is not anoption for mobile TV
John Maguiregeneral manager,consumer mobile,S3
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Visit us at Amsterdam7-11 September 2007Stand 1.171
Mobile TV
page twenty six www.csimagazine.com Cable & Satellite International sept-oct 2007
can deliver the same recognisable content
and user experience at home and on the
move, with the additional benefit of cross-
platform familiarity and usability, potentially
utilising both DVB-T and DVB-H.
One of the biggest issues for
broadcasters to address is how to best
form relationships with all the parties in the
value chain. Traditionally, broadcasters
have strong relationships with content
owners and aggregators and have a deep
knowledge of how to deploy and manage
secure content delivery to the masses. In
addition, because the broadcasters' license
content directly from the content owners,
they are already engaging in cross-platform
distribution licensing deals to satellite,
terrestrial, broadband and mobile. As
the cellular operators enter this space,
particularly in the shared networks that
are likely to develop across Europe, they
will typically obtain a licence to mobile
content via an aggregator. This is a big
disadvantage to cellular operators wishing
to enter quad or triple play markets as they
have to re-negotiate deals for the same
content, multiple times.
The strength of these existing
relationships should allow broadcasters to
extract the maximum benefit from the
opportunity that mobile TV presents.
However, compared to the cellular
operators, who have intimate relationships
with individual consumers, the
broadcasters' relationship with the end
customer is relatively weak. Cellular
operators have access to a huge amount
of information about their customers,
which will be invaluable when the market
matures and personalised advertising
becomes more prevalent.
Broadcasters have a choice to make
as to whether they partner with individual
mobile operators to share the cost or
whether they invest in their existing
broadcast infrastructure and offer aggregation
services or content to multiple mobile
operators. Sites and planning for transmitters
are of ever increasing concern especially in
the developed world. There will be a land
grab in order to secure enough locations to
build these new transmission networks, but
the traditional broadcasters have a huge
head-start in this area. The technology is
available to support DVB-H and DVB-T on
the same multiplex, but it has not yet been
adopted simply because spectrum for DVB-H
is so hard to find. However, when the
mainstream broadcast operators do get
access to more spectrum, they will benefit
from greater efficiency supporting both
DVB-H and DVB-T networks.
Handset encoding and decodingRegardless, in order for all of the players
in the industry to get to market at all, the
technology needs to deliver high quality
content to their target audiences in a way
that maximises the number of devices that
can be used to receive the service.
Maximising both ARPU and the addressable
market is a must. The key issue for
broadcasters and operators is the lack of
availability of suitable handsets.
Support for broadcast TV is increasing in
high-end mobile phones, and Open Platform
handheld devices running OS, such as
Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux, allow
mobile DTV applications to be upgraded by
means of a downloadable software client.
However this is still not ideal as the device
capabilities of mass-market phones are
often not sufficient to enable the delivery of
mobile TV content. While software-based AV
decoders are continuing to improve, the
majority of DVB-H phones that have been
launched into the market have some form of
hardware acceleration for the decoder (in
addition to the tuner) that adds to the total
BOM price. S3 believes the spread of
mobile TV-enabled devices will range from
high-end car navigation systems through to
low cost feature phones and have already
licensed into each of these markets. This
dictates that mobile content must be re-
provisioned, re-purposed or re-scaled to be
suitable for the screen sizes and processing
power being used.
There are a number of schools of thought
regarding how this might be achieved.
Specialist encoder developers are already
working on solutions that can take a single
feed and produce outputs at both D1 and
QVGA or QCIF resolutions. This enables the
broadcasters to produce both HD and SD
streams, together with one purpose for
mobile at no extra cost. Other pre- and post-
processing techniques are being developed
for both the encoding and the decoding
process. For example, feature highlighting
improves the viewing of ball sports such as
football by automatically highlighting fast
moving objects in otherwise static scenes.
Examples on the device side include
improvements in video scaling and contrast
modification, which dynamically adapts the
contrast of incoming video stream to better
match the performance characteristics of the
mobile device screen. These techniques will
be important in order to re-produce content
appropriate for a variety of devices with
different screen characteristics and sizes.
Another interesting development is that the
majority of companies currently deploying
mobile TV services are specifying a TV-out
capability on their handset, to allow users to
view their content on a bigger screen when
not on the move. The concept of using the
handset as a portable set-top box or secure
rights management agent will impact on the
way that content is re-provisioned and re-
purposed, since having compressed it for use
on a small screen there is now a requirement
to expand it again without a discernable loss
of quality.
A proactive approachThere is a concern held by broadcasters and
content owners that mobile TV delivered by a
cellular operator could cannibalise their
existing TV market, particularly if the TV out
function is used. However, if broadcasters
take a proactive approach to their
involvement in mobile TV they will be able to
expand the market rather than suffer a
shrinking one.
One solution to the problem of how to
provide a suitable signal for the range of
“There are a number of schools of thought regarding how content can be re-purposed or re-scaled.”
DVB-H handsets
Mobile TV
devices enabled to receive mobile TV is
hierarchical encoding; a technology which
is already used by some of the mobile TV
delivery standards deployed in the US.
Rather than broadcasting a brand new
mobile signal, extra information is
broadcast to improve reception and viewing
on mobile devices. MPH and A-VSB both
carry the basic broadcast ATSC signal
that's already being used by the terrestrial
broadcasters in the US and they piggyback
a smaller signal on top of that, allowing
users to receive the signal on a mobile
device. MediaFLO also allows a slightly
different form of hierarchical transmission,
which it calls layering. A content stream can
contain a low-bandwidth, robust signal for
viewers in poor signal areas with additional,
less robust video information layered on
top for viewers in areas where there is
good reception.
Standards evolution in the US has
reached a critical point and the ATSC
has recently received ten submissions
in response to its Request for Proposals
(RFP) for its Mobile and Handheld Standard
(ATSC-M/H) from companies such as
Nokia, LG, and Samsung, all of whom have
strong links with currently available mobile
TV technology. The level of interest in the
standard is excellent news for the mobile
TV sector and the ATSC's decision will help
clarify and standardise delivery technology
in the US and beyond.
In Europe, broadcasters have the
opportunity to simulcast existing
broadcast content for mobile standards
such as DVB-H or DVB-SH in order to
maintain the users' cross-platform
familiarity with broadcast content.
However, this simulcast relies on the use
of advanced codecs and hardware AV
decoders in the mobile device, in order to
be successful. As mentioned previously,
relying on H.264 and AAC+ (or HE-AAC)
enabled devices reduces the addressable
population quite considerably. S3 has
identified this as a key issue and has
been working with equipment vendors to
enable operators and broadcasters to
deliver low-cost mobile TV solutions for
connected and non-connected devices to
seed the market.
Broadcasters are now in pole position
to use their existing infrastructure and
relationships with content providers and
their knowledge of conditional access
to extract the maximum benefit from
the opportunity that mobile TV presents.
Safe in the knowledge that DVB-H will be
the standard of choice, at least in Europe,
there is also an opportunity for
broadcasters to make use of current and
emerging technologies to target both large
screen and small screen devices with high-
end and low-end processing power without
the need to broadcast multiple signals.
However, the competition from cellular
operators will rapidly increase as they
overcome their technical challenges and
build relationships with content and
conditional access providers.
John Maguire is general manager
of consumer mobile at Silicon
& Software Systems (S3).
CSI
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Visit us at Amsterdam7-11 September 2007Stand 1.171
“Relying on H.264 and AAC+ enableddevices reduces the addressablepopulation quite considerably.”