Broadcasters Push Mobile TV Standard

Broadcasters Push Mobile TV Standard

Posted by Sam Churchill on January 9th, 2009

The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!
– Thank You for Smoking

The Open Mobile Video Coalition said today it will launch mobile DTV services across 63 stations in 22 markets, covering 35% of U.S. television markets with their ATSC M/H mobile video standard. It keeps ATSC royalty checks coming to developers of the U.S. DTV standard.

U.S. broadcasters will provide live, local and national over-the-air digital TV services from affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox as well as smaller partners ION Television, CW Television Network and MyNetwork TV. Nine PBS stations are expected to join the launch in the second half of this year.

The OMVC plans to use the existing broadcast tv spectrum for free, ad-supported mobile tv service. Harris said that 95 percent of the technical capabilities for the ATSC M/H standard was demonstrated at CES this week, with 100 percent of the required technology will be available within 60 days.

Harris is working with Roundbox and Triveni Digital to integrate electronic program guide services for program stream and data information into its ATSC mobile DTV platform. The UDcast ATSC/MPH IP Encapsulator puts mobile video IP content on the top of the ATSC transmission while Triveni provides a platform for point-to-multipoint content distribution for targeted point-to-point delivery.

The ATSC M/H standard is based on a system developed by Harris Broadcast and LG Electronics. It enables broadcasters to send mobile programming “without compromising the station’s standard of high-definition digital television programming”. The coalition said it will cost about $250,000 to add mobile DTV capabilities to existing transmission stations.

An agreement by LG and Samsung combined their competing MPH (Mobile Pedestrian Handheld) and A-VSB (Advanced-Vestigial Side Band) systems into one proposal before the ATSC.

ATSC itself was an exercise in compromise.

ATSC is a coalition that was formed 15 years ago from the four competing digital proposals put before the FCC. ATSC combined their different standards into one royalty pool. ATSC rejected the multipath-resistant, European-backed OFDM modulation because — arguably — there was no royalty money in it for them. At the time, ATSC poo-pooed the notion of mobile television.

But that was then.

Now U.S. consumers are warming to the idea of watching video on their phones. According to AC Nielsen, in a report released this week, 10.3 million U.S. mobile subscribers access video content on their phones during a given month, or just 5 percent of all wireless subscribers. But the audience is growing—up 14 percent versus 2007–driven primarily to more Internet-friendly phones. Some 71% of viewers are satisfied with the experience.

Broadcasters transmit 19.4Mbps on their DTV channels (pdf). The MPH data stream is multiplexed with the main ATSC program stream. If 4.4 Mbps is allocated for the MPH™ stream, then approximately 15 Mbps remains for the main ATSC programming (pdf).

CableLabs says 15Mbps is the “safe harbor bitrate” to allow all forms of HD VOD content (including talking heads and fast-moving action films) to be seen at a quality that represents what HDTV should be about, including 5.1 audio and an absence of pixelation.

So a secondary video channel, such as weather or news, multi-cast in SD, would have to be eliminated to make room for mobile television. Assuming it works.

The ATSC standard uses Vestigial Sideband modulation (VSB), similar to conventional analog television, which is ghost-prone. The 19.4 Mbps is transmitted over a 6 MHz tv channel. The ATSC M/H standard is a hybrid, consisting mainly of LG’s MPH and Samsung’s A-VSB.

ATSC-M/H would (ostensibly) provide free mobile television to viewers.

Other mobile television technology includes the terrestrial, OFDM-based based DVB-H standard, the satellite/terrestrial delivered DVB-SH (used by ICO and others), Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB), used in Europe, TDtv (based on TD-CDMA technology from IPWireless), 1seg (based on Japan’s ISDB-T), Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) and MediaFLO, Qualcomm’s proprietary standard that broadcasts to cellphones on UHF channel 54.

Cellular providers can also use their own CDMA or HSPA data channels. AT&T and Verizon use MobiTV for unicasting while the current 802.16e Mobile WiMAX standard could use MXtv, says developer NextWave. It can switch from multi-casting to unicasting.

Cellular and WiMAX channels do not require large, ungainly tv antennas (or tuners). Better reception using broadband wireless is enabled with OFDM modulation, cellular handoff, and video on-demand.

ICO will use DVB-SH for mobile video, delivering 10-15 channels of premium live TV content for 7–15 inch screens. Testing of ICO’s G1 satellite and innovative Ground Based Beam Forming (GBBF) system is now complete and the company has accepted the Space Segment from Space Systems/Loral. The satellite’s large 12 meter antenna delivers mobile television services directly to small mobile and portable devices. Last September, ICO announced that WiMAX provider Clearwire will join as a service partner for its trial in Raleigh Durham, North Carolina, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

What NAB really wants — and what they may get with the Open Mobile Video standard — is a mechanism for pay television. Not bad when group owners get our spectrum free for “public service”.

source: dailywireless.org