Broadcasters make Mobile TV

With over 225 million mobile subscribers, around 1.8 million of them watch use their cell phones as television, which is according to a data from comScore in September. But around 800 broadcasters who formed a group plans to change that. They plan to make mobile TV shows both free and available at the same time it is shown on regular TV.

In April 2007, the group formed the Open Mobile Video Coalition, with its goal of establishing a standard for the delivery of mobile TV in the future digital television spectrum.

The members of the OMVC stepped closer to making their goal a reality on Nov.25. The group together with the Advanced Television Standards Committee, which was responsible for creating standards for TV sets, approved a candidate standard for mobile digital television.

In the world of standards setting, this means that the ATSC mobile DTV standard will be the standard way of delivering mobile broadcast television going forward thought it will have additional tweaks in the future. In the real world, this device is capable of delivering free, mobile TV as early as 2010.

Consumers Go All In

Samsung and LG Electronics, which backed the standard, will start making the devices next year. After the completion of the move to digital broadcasting, TV stations will start wide tests of mobile DTV.

By early in 2010, according to Anne Schelle, the executive director of the OMVC, consumers should be able to buy such devices off the shelf.

Schelle is positive on whether or not the consumers want mobile television on tiny screens. She views interactive services and highlights that the standard is flexible to offer a digital video recorder.

Schelle points out that broadcast television still controls the content people most want to watch, and by delivering that directly to mobile devices broadcasters can satisfy consumers.

"I do think there will be a day five years from now where you will be in a restaurant and everyone will pull out their mobile devices and be able to watch a live broadcast of whatever that seminal event of the day is," Schelle said.