Thomson-Micronas Mobile DTV System Not Ready for Consumer Trials
A mobile DTV system developed by Micronas and Thomson that’s a candidate to become an industry standard won’t be ready for consumer trials that a group of broadcasters plans to run this year. The Open Mobile Video Coalition plans at midyear to give consumers in at least two markets multiple mobile DTV receivers in devices such as cellphones and lap-top computers developed separately by Samsung and Rohde & Schwarz and by LG and Harris (CD Jan 9 p13) and monitor how they use them. Broadcasters hope they can introduce a commercial mobile DTV service in February 2009, just after the DTV transition.
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“Thomson and Micronas were sort of late into the game,” said Richard Fiore, Thomson senior director for sales in transmission and mobility. “While we think we have a better solution, it really comes down to the fact that we are not aligned with a consumer device manufacturer. For us to get our technology into a chip in a time frame to meet these trials… we just do not have the time to do that job correctly.”
Broadcasters are hurrying to commercialize the technology, on display this week at CES in Las Vegas, because they fear any delay could cede the mobile TV market to competitors. “They've got Qualcomm going out there with Verizon doing V Cast,” Fiore said. “They're lighting up more and more sites every week.” And Internet giants such as Microsoft and Google will seek more-efficient ways to distribute video as it comes to consume the bulk of Internet bandwidth, he said.
Thomson and Grass Valley will still take part in ATSC’s independent demonstration of viability -- tests that will also be conducted by the coalition -- said Mark Aitken, who works with the Coalition and chairs the ATSC subcommittee overseeing the Mobile-Handheld DTV standards process. Those tests begin Feb. 17, a year before the analog cutoff deadline. “They've been invited, they've given their RSVP, they're going to attend and in those activities they'll be treated no differently than the Samsung and LG folks,” he said.
The coalition plans to announce before or at the NAB’s annual convention the outcome of those February tests, Aitken said. “There will be an announcement before NAB of our reporting of our IDOV activity and we hope that creates a reaction in the part of all the involved parties,” he said. Still, the ability to get a product to market quickly will be critical, Aitken said. “We do want the best system possible. That’s clear,” he said. “But we want that best system possible in time to serve a market that we believe has a very narrow window of opportunity for maximum success.”
Much work remains for ATSC on what engineers call the upper layers of the mobile DTV technology, such as digital rights management and conditional access, Fiore said. “We think we have a tremendous amount to offer to the broadcast community in this and we'll continue working to find the best system for this technology,” he said. “We're going to continue working with OMVC and ATSC.”