Sharp's mobile TV tuner that receives DVB-H and T-DMB

The world of mobile TV is a confusing place for us poor consumers, who in the UK at least are currently stuck with streaming channels over our 3G connections. Well, or there’s Virgin Mobile’s Lobster phone, of course, which receives digital channels via a DAB tuner.

Digital broadcasts are The Future when it comes to mobile TV, though, although there are various different formats competing for the mobile operators’ R&D budgets. T-DMB is going great guns in South Korea, for example, while it looks as if DVB-H might get the nod here in Europe.

So hurrah for Sharp, which has developed a dual-mode tuner that can handle both.

It goes by the catchy name of the VA3B5EZ915, and is small enough to fit on the end of a finger, as you can see in the photo above (although Sharp could be being crafty and using a giant as their hand model, of course).

The size means you won’t need a big lunk of a phone to make use of it, while it’s apparently low in power consumption too, which should mean you can watch an entire episode of Hollyoaks before your phone’s battery conks out.

Plus, there’s the bonus that it’ll enable phones capable of receiving digital broadcasts in Asia and Europe, ensuring that when Japanese mobile users travel to the UK, they’ll be able to laugh at our comically strange TV shows where we humiliate the general public. How times have changed.

VA3B5EZ915 website (via PMP Today)