With more spectrum opened by Friday’s analog TV cutoff, Qualcomm’s FLO TV expanded its coverage to new cellphone markets. The proprietary mobile TV network, delivered to cellphones by carriers AT&T and Verizon, will expand into 39 new markets, FLO TV said. The service was to go live immediately on Friday in 15 markets that included Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco, with other markets to follow throughout the year. In addition to adding new markets, immediately upon the over-air analog cutoff FLO TV was to expand its service in existing markets that include Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, the company said. Those additions and expansions couldn’t be confirmed independently at our deadline. With Friday’s analog TV cutoff, FLO TV potentially would be available to an additional 60 million AT&T and Verizon customers. Parent Qualcomm didn’t cite how many subscribers the service now has through AT&T and Verizon. FLO TV’s dedicated service lets cellphone users access broadcast news, sports and entertainment from content owners that include CBS, ESPN, FOX, MTV and NBC. Its cellphone-delivered content mostly is simulcast with the terrestrial TV broadcasts, although there are options for time-shifted reception to some mobile devices. The simulcast service is linear, though -- at least in its current form. “Linear” means that subscribers can’t now review or fast-forward a paused or stopped program, as they can with home PVRs. FLO TV is available through a variety of cellphones offered by AT&T and Verizon, including models from LG and Samsung. Qualcomm also has teamed with Audiovox to deliver vehicular entertainment systems for FLO TV. Qualcomm’s subscription-based TV delivery to cellphones will have competition soon from cost-free, over-air delivery of DTV broadcasts to phones and other portables developed by the Open Mobile Video Coalition. That system uses MPEG- 4/H.264 compression to deliver ATSC broadcasts to actively- moving receivers, like those in cars. The original ATSC system, begun in 1998, uses MPEG-2 compression that was designed for stationary receivers in homes. The new MPEG-4- based broadcast system for mobile reception should be in place later this year. It “piggybacks” on the broadcasters’ MPEG-2 signal. About 70 TV stations with 35 percent coverage of U.S. TV markets are to begin over-air broadcasts to mobile devices this year.
Popular with members of Congress, a bill proposing a ban on loud TV commercials got a lukewarm reception from broadcasters at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Thursday. Friday’s deadline for full-power TV stations to end analog broadcasts has hastened a technology change that can be used across cable, satellite, broadcasting and telco TV, making legislation unnecessary, said Jim Starzynski, principal engineer with NBC Universal.
Five consumer groups sympathize with the Vizio and Westinghouse Digital petition that asks the FCC to regulate DTV patents and punish those that don’t license the technology on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, the groups said in joint reply comments filed Wednesday. Americans are overpaying for DTV sets because patent holders extract excessive royalties for licenses, Vizio and Westinghouse have told the commission in a petition filed under the name of a group they call the Coalition United to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transition, CUT FATT.
El Salvador will use the ATSC digital TV standard, the ATSC Forum said.
If stations’ mobile DTV plans are successful, broadcast operations could more closely resemble phone carriers’, said Sinclair CEO David Smith. “Over time as we get into what I would call a gap-filling mode, it’s very conceivable that we'll be just like a telephone operation from the standpoint of receivability,” he said. “That’s kind of the ultimate objective.” The mobile DTV technology, still under consideration as a standard at the ATSC, is continuously improving, Smith said. “The technology is clearly getting better and better and better,” he said. “While it will never be perfect, certainly when it comes time to enter the marketplace, we'll be substantially better than the original cell phone structures when they were put in place.” Sinclair Q1 sales fell 18 percent from a year earlier to $131.3 million. It swung to a $87 million net loss from a $14.9 million profit. Sinclair stock rose 19 percent Thursday.
The courts or the International Trade Commission or the Patent and Trademark Office, not the FCC, are the proper venues for challenging DTV patents if one deems they're not being licensed on reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) terms, DTV licensors’ heavy hitters told the FCC in written comments Monday. All, including ATSC, Funai, LG, MPEG LA, Philips, Qualcomm, Thomson and Zenith, urged the commission to deny a Vizio-Westinghouse Digital petition that the FCC initiate a rulemaking to regulate the patent fees and impose fines on licensors that don’t comply.
LAS VEGAS -- A backlog of perhaps several hundred TV license renewals persists at the FCC (CD Feb 8 p3/07) because the stations are the subjects of old indecency complaints and the commission is awaiting rulings on several court cases, industry lawyers said Monday. Speakers on an NAB panel complained that some licenses have been held up for years. They said the FCC has asked licensees that needed renewals to sell stations to agree to let the FCC take enforcement action for an indefinite time in exchange for clearance. Under acting Chairman Michael Copps, the period is down to two years, they said.
LG Electronics said it will begin mass-producing mobile DTV receiver chips in June. The development will set “the stage for widespread availability to the industry for a range of new consumer electronics products,” LG said Friday. Its LG2160A chip has an automatic power-saving mode to extend battery life for viewing DTV on the go, the company said. It handles all the ATSC mobile DTV standard’s demodulating and equalization functions and outputs IP streams to enable AV decoding in compatible receivers, LG said.
Sarnoff Corp. said it will introduce new tools for testing and validating compliance with the ATSC Mobile DTV candidate standard at the NAB show next week.
Mobile video usage and sales are still growing and projected to continue growing despite the downturn in the economy -- though some forecasts for the nascent industry have been toned down, analysts and industry executives told us. Usage and awareness of mobile video services continues to grow, but spending on the services may not grow as quickly in 2009 as the industry expected last year, said Lewis Ward, IDC Research manager for mobile, media and entertainment. IDC cut by 10 percent its mobile entertainment sales growth forecasts for 2009 after the economy tanked, he said. “It is impacting the market,” he said.