Broadcasters’ Role in Mobile DTV Still Jelling
TV broadcasters’ role in U.S. mobile DTV remains unclear, despite their ambitious efforts to set an industrywide technological standard and introduce a service in 2009, said industry figures. Questioning whether stations will invest in mobile DTV gear, some note hurdles to stations’ introduction of paid services. But broadcasters are seen as having a leg up on rival mobile video services because they have a better grasp on programming than phone companies, including mobile carriers.
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Broadcasters lack experience with conditional access and billing subscribers, said Joe Zeller, vice president of marketing for Snell & Wilcox, a transcoder maker. That will pose an obstacle to making money in mobile video and could force them to rely on advertising, he said. Broadcasters’ limited coverage areas could also limit their service offerings, said Unique Broadband Systems Marketing Manager Rein Taul. “People with any mobile device want to roam,” he said. “If I'm a consumer in Chicago and I drive out to the suburbs and I'm not going to get the signal,” that’s going to be a big problem, he added. UBS makes mobile TV gear based on the DVB-H standard.
Stations may not have budgets for mobile DTV investment, said Taul, who once sold gear to U.S. broadcasters. “They're under a lot of pressure right now to run the business,” he said. “A lot of them, even if it’s a minor investment, might not be willing to step up and offer it.” Station managers and group owners that do invest likely will want to see a pretty quick return, Taul said. “The smart ones will experiment with new stuff,” he said. “But I've just seen a very conservative budget process that has really tightened up in the last five to six years.”
Broadcasters’ most formidable competitors may be satellites, not phone companies, Taul said. Prospects are good that a satellite-terrestrial hybrid mobile TV service will take hold in Europe and the U.S., he said. “We think DVB-SH will probably take over. It will take a few years to get the satellites in place,” he said. “But it makes so much sense, especially with large geographic areas, to do a hybrid system.” ICO Global Communications, Alcatel-Lucent and Hughes Network Systems plan to test a DVB-SH system in the U.S. next year (CD Sept 5 p15).
Broadcasters may end up working with other service providers such as a DVB-SH outfit or Qualcomm, now building its own national mobile video broadcasting network for its MediaFLO system, said In-Stat analyst Michelle Abraham. If they succeed, those other platforms won’t necessarily squeeze out TV stations, she said, noting that national services like MediaFLO will be looking for local programming.
Another hurdle is broadcasters’ lack of leverage with mobile device makers. Wireless carriers wield most of the power through the generous subsidies they offer subscribers. “The groups that are presenting their technology to the ATSC, will be looking first at doing more retail type of products,” such as DTV adapters for notebooks and sets for the back seats of cars, Abraham said. “They don’t expect to have the receiver technology into handsets from the start.”