Category Archives: Mobile TV

Adobe abandons Flash on TVs as well as mobiles

Posted by Barry Flynn on November 10, 2011 2 comments

The Gigaom website says that yesterday’s ZDNET exclusive about Adobe abandoning Flash in favour of HTML-5 wasn’t confined to the mobile space.

In a statement released to Gigaom, an Adobe spokeperson reportedly confirmed it would no longer focus on porting the Flash plugin into web browsers on CE devices, either. The Adobe statement said:

“Adobe will continue to support existing licensees who are planning on supporting Flash Player for web browsing on digital home devices and are using the Flash Player Porting Kit to do so. However we believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience, and we will continue to encourage the device and content publishing community down that path.”

The late Steve Job’s long-standing opposition to the standard was no doubt influential in the move, since as a result, Flash was not supported on iPhones, iPods or iPads. In a famous open letter in April 2010, Jobs outlined his reasons for the Apple ban,arguing that “the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”

Jobs went on to predict that “new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too).”

UPDATE: Farncombe has published an analysis of how Adobe’s decision will impact service providers and connected TV platforms here.

QR codes for TV-based smartphone transactions?

Posted by Barry Flynn on July 27, 2011 No comments

Interesting think-piece here by Rick Howe at Tracy Swedlow’s Interactive TV Today.
Rick wonders if the use of QR codes might take off on (US) TV as a way of enabling secure purchases via smartphones in response to a TV screen prompt. His article contains a number of video-grabs of US examples of such applications.
Rick bases his argument on the growing popularity of QR functionality in mobile phones.
QR codes (short for Quick Response codes) are a high-data-content variation on barcodes (see here).
They can be captured and analysed by phone camera software, triggering a link to a relevant website.
As an example, the QR code below contains a link to farncombe’s website (www.farncombe.com).

‘T2-Lite’: a new candidate for mobile broadcasting

Posted by Barry Flynn on July 14, 2011 No comments

European digital TV standards body DVB has introduced a new, slimmed-down profile as part of the latest version of its next-generation DVB-T2 standard, targeting ‘low-capacity’ applications such as mobile broadcasting.
Known as ‘T2-Lite’, the new profile avoids processing- and memory-heavy modes, allowing more efficient receiver designs to be used – e.g. for a DVB-T2 tuner in a smartphone or tablet.
T2-Lite is limited to a maximum bit-rate of 4MBit/s, whereas the full HD-centric profile can run up to 48MBit/s (in the UK, DVB-T2 uses around 40MBit/s for DTT HD – see here.)
DVB says that “One possible use for T2-Lite enables the simulcasting of two different versions of the same service, with different bit-rates and levels of protection, which would allow better reception in fringe areas.”
According to a post on the BBC’s R&D blog, the BBC has been testing T2-Lite since July 7. In the trial, an HD signal for fixed reception and a T2-Lite version are combined within a single multiplex, with the T2-Lite frames placed in the gaps between the HD ones.
The concept that a single DVB signal could contain different versions of a broadcast which could be extracted by different receivers with different capabilities was proposed by the ‘god-father’ of DVB, Prof Ulrich Reimers, when DVB was originally set up, but has yet to prove popular in practice.
The BBC solution will be demonstrated at the forthcoming IBC exhibition in Amsterdam.

Plum Consulting: ‘Using L-Band for mobile downloads in EU could generate €54bn over 10 years’

Posted by Barry Flynn on June 15, 2011 No comments

A new study by Plum Consulting argues that using the so-called L-Band in Europe (1452-1492 MHz) for a terrestrial supplemental mobile downlink could address burgeoning requirements for download capacity in the mobile sector, and generate net present value of up to €54bn over ten years.
Plum notes there is currently”a significant asymmetry of mobile communications traffic, with up to eight times as much data being downloaded than is being uploaded.” This is due to the very rich content being made available, ranging from videos, to apps and to books.
Plum concludes that the L-Band is “the ideal solution, not just to help address the spectrum crunch but as an important step forward in achieving the EU’s Digital Agenda target of providing 30Mbps access to 100% of European citizens by 2020.”

IBC Report – DVB-T2: a possible home for the DVB’s next-generation handheld standard?

Posted by Barry Flynn on September 13, 2009 No comments

Connected TV met up at IBC for the first time with Peter Siebert, who recently took over from Peter MacAvock as executive director of the DVB Project office (earning himself the nickname ‘Peter 2.0′ in the process), and was treated to the latest version of the DVB standards road-map.

One of the most interesting elements to come out of our discussion concerned the fate of what used to be known as DVB-H2 – the next-generation version of the mobile/handheld broadcast standard DVB-H.

Temporarily shelved because of an intervening effort to get the satellite/terrestrial hybrid version of DVB-H (DVB-SH) underway (its first European implementation will be on the Solaris Mobile venture (see previous post), it is now back on the books again – under the working title of DVB-NGH (for ‘Next Generation Handheld).

Asked whether DVB-T2 – which has always encompassed advanced mobile broadcast capabilities as well as high-capacity fixed HDTV ones – mightn’t itself play the role of a DVB-H substitute, Siefert conceded that “maybe [DVB-NGH] is only DVB-T2. The elements of DVB-T2 are a good candidate.”

On the face of it, this might make good sense: operators in some countries are already looking upon robust profiles of DVB-T as a potential substitute for DVB-H, simply because such implementations re-use a pre-existing transmitter network.

Equally likely, perhaps, would be DVB-T2 with ‘add-ons’ – for instance, DVB-NGH could contain DVB-T2 plus LGE (4G) elements – or, indeed, it could end up as something entirely separate from DVB-T2, Siebert said.

In any event, the next DVB Technical Module meeting is expected to give the go-ahead to a new technical group which will decide what NGH will be based on.

At that same meeting, a study group will be reporting back on current industry 3D developments (very much the theme of this year’s IBC show) with a view to a decision being reached about what DVB’s role should be in the 3D standardisation process, if any. Siebert suggested DVB come contribute elements to do with service information and transport protocols.

Siebert said there was also an ongoing discussion going on between the HBBTV backers (see previous story) and DVB as to “whether DVB should play a more active role” in the hybrid DVB standardisation space, perhaps acting as an umbrella group for various industry initiatives.

Amongst other recent developments, nine European operators, including the likes of Kabel Deutschland, Kabel Baden Wittenberg, Ono and Com Hem, have now committed themselves to the next-generation version of DVB’s cable standard, DVB-C2. Siebert commented that in Germany in particular, cable operators were running out of capacity, so they required the extra capacity DVB-C2 could offer. As an example, he pointed to the fact that Kabel Deutchsland’s RFPs now contained questions about whether set-top box manufacturers were able to support DVB-C2.

The first DVB-C2 prototypes are due to be shown at the Anga Cable show in Germany next year, and IBC 2010 would certainly feature the technology, Siebert said.