Bewitched by the new Nokia N77? A fabulous use of ultra converged high-tech? Or a restrictive, distracting and debilitating waste of time? In this editorial, I put forward my own opinion, m'lud, the case against mobile TV.
Read on in the full article.
(Incidentally, for an older pre-N77 feature on this topic please see http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Television_the_Internet__the_Mobile_Phone.php )
You're spot on that mobile TV will never be anywhere near as big as mobile music or mobile radio, in the same way videophone calls will never get anywhere near to replacing voice calls. But there's still common situations where a mobile TV would be just the ticket.
As the article points out:
"When watching, you'll be very restricted in what else you can do, you'll be distracted and semi-oblivious to your surroundings."
...but if you're on an hour long train journey surrounded by non-descript suburban scenery and sweaty grim-faced passengers, becoming distracted and semi-oblivious to your surroundings is something most people would welcome. 😊
In fact the places where one might use mobile TV are pretty much the places where one might use the mobile web or mobile games: when you're bored and not distracted.
On the signal strength issue, I can get a 3G signal on a train, so I assume I could watch television delivered through 3G. It's not DVB-H but it's still television, and the end users won't ultimately care where it comes from as long as it entertains them. I've had no problem receiving conventional radio signals on buses so I assume DVB-H would work on them.
I think part of the problem is that everyone's going after people who want to watch programmes live, but perhaps the real market here is for phones that have a PVR-style ability to record programmes for later viewing.
Broadcast TV may be difficult or impossible on aircraft, but in-flight video is extremely popular and a mobile TV phone which allowed you to save programmes for watching later could be a real life saver on any long haul journey. Instead of having to put up with whatever the airline provides, you could choose your own TV. Even more brilliant would be airlines that had video sockets so that phones with TV Out sockets could use larger in-seat screens. Obviously you could do a lot of this already using a PC and phone memory card, but any solution which is entirely based on the phone is always going to be easier and more popular.
These are all niche markets compared to music or radio, but they're still nice little niches, and as the price of the technology goes down it'll be one more box to tick on the list of features.
Very true. It all comes down to context of use. Handset manufacturers don't seem to take into account the way that the context-of-use affects the way we use technology.
A similar example is the inclusion of voice recognition on most phones. Hardly anyone ever uses it - because it just isn't appropraite in most settings.