TV on a mobi – you'll be waiting for a while yet
Some interesting stories in the UK press about the arrival of what is being billed as the ‘tellyphone.’
Both the Evening Standard and the Mirror ran with a tale that mobile phones that could access digital TV channels would be on sale in the UK by Christmas 2005.
The Mirror even managed to show a picture of the phone, which was in fact a Motorola A920, a product that to our knowledge certainly can’t pull in any telly channels.
It seems the rumpus has been inspired by Nokia’s recent round of press interviews for it upcoming 7700 media phone. As far as we understand the handset, which is compatible with the digital TV hybrid format DVB-H, goes on sale in early summer.
As for actually viewing programmes on the 7700. Well there’s a trial going on in Finland, and err that’s it. The trial is linked to Finnish radio station Kiss and apparently is more about delivering still images and data content to the handset rather than video.
A spokesperson for Nokia told TD that it was of course talking to broadcasters and operators in the UK, but it could be a very long time before we are watching Coronation Street (that’s a quaint old British soap for our American readers) on a mobile. And I suspect that when this momentous event happens the Nokia 7700 will be long gone.
We should add that DVB-H is actually a good format to watch TV on your mobile as, unlike say the streamed video from Three, it doesn’t use exiting network bandwidth.
How much TV you watch on your mobi is a moot point anyway. We reckon that you probably wouldn’t be able to catch a whole episode of Corrie before the battery packed up and died. Ho hum.
