How About a TV Show With Your Cell Phone?

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It's possible with the new mobisodes

TV on your cell phones is a new thing, but it's the wave of the future. Now you can watch mini episodes (mobisodes) of TV shows. Will you choose to watch an episode of CSI, a sitcom, reality TV, or the news? It all depends what TV shows and cell phone carriers jump in on this craze. When the technology matures mobisodes will extend past eight frames per second. It's all ready heading in that direction now. In February 2005, Verizon began video streaming at 15 frames per second with what's known as their V Cast service. Three cell phones: T-Mobile Wing, Sprint Touch by HTC and the AT&T Tilt offer the EDGE service. Please click on the picture of the actual TV capable cell phone above to learn more...

• Subscribe to Verizon VCast service for $15.00 a month
• Unlimited Video viewing & browsing on Verizon's Mobile Web 2.0 Service

There are several other MP3 Capable cell phones, please click on this TV Cell Phone Link. The ability to view TV on a cell phone was first introduced in the Asian markets. Often this market is ahead of the U.S. cell phone market by a year or two. In Asia it is common place now to see a video on cell phones. This is as routine as color screens.

Is it marketing or consumer demand that's driving the movement for TV viewing on cell phones?
It's probably a combination of both. According to a recent study by the Diffusion Group, 30 percent of cell phone owners are open to watching TV and movies on cell phones.

Who is entering the U.S. TV cell phone market?
One early player in this arena is MobiTV. This service is now offered by Cingular and Sprint PCS on at least 30 cell phones. With MobiTV you can view MSNBC, NBC Mobile, ABC News Now, Fox Sports, CNBC, C-SPAN 1 & 2, Discovery Channel, College Sports TV and sports highlights from Fox Sports. These TV programs are designed especially for the small cell phone screens.

What is it like to view TV on a cell phone?
When you watch TV on a cell phone it's a lot like video first appeared on a computer screen five years ago. It's still slow. The techology is in it's infancy and as it TV shows are transmitted at eight frames per second (fps). When you get a high-speed connection the performance improves. But the service isn't offered with 3G networks.

Fox Entertainment is also planning to produce mobisodes specifically designed for small screens. These will be broadcast on Verizon's V Cast service, which runs $15 per month. This service is an add-on to a regular Verizion calling plan and comes with unlimited video viewing and browsing on Verizon's Mobile Web 2.0 service.

Where is the future headed for this technology?
By 2006, Nokia's DVB-H technology (Digital Video Broadcast for Handsets) will be available. With this system a digital video receiver is built right into the handset. The handset becomes like a TV channel changer. The viewer can choose from one of ten channels offering DVB-H broadcasts. The content is delivered on-demand.

Also, on the horizon is QualComm's MediaFLO Content Distribution System, which will make it easier for carriers to deliver video on their networks. The plan is for video to be transmitted to cell phone carriers without impacting their networks. QualComm plans to push the video content across the networks simultaneously without buffering.

Unfortunately, the video broadcasts will need to be stored on the cell phone. If an image consumes a megabyte per minute of space, then battery life will be drained to download it. This could deter viewers. They could miss out on timely news because they didn't want to spend the time to download a TV clip. A future workaround might be to offer a way to view TV clips without the need to down load them.

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