Mobile television

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Mobile phone with TV reception (DMB reception)

The term Mobile Television ( Mobile TV ), mobile TV ( mobile TV ) dive in 2006 to increase and refers to the use of television programs on mobile devices of all kinds: mobile phones , pocket TVs ( portable TV , handheld TV ), PMPs , laptops and televisions in vehicles . A clear distinction is not always made between broadcast and individually accessed procedures.

The sub-term mobile phone TV refers to portable devices with a relatively small screen, most of which also offer telephony functions and are therefore individually addressable, which enables interactivity, other billing models and transmission methods. In some cases, two different technologies are combined for the reception and transmission direction ( return channel ), such as DVB-H and GSM.

Basics

In 2007, the European Commission passed a legal act “Strengthening the internal market for mobile television” and in the same year the wording “and mobile terrestrial television” was added to the Private Television Act (PrTV-G) and declared a subject of regulation in Austria.

Some providers use the designation mobile television in an attempt to differentiate it from the term mobile phone TV , which was established for video offers via the UMTS telephony system. While cell phone TV in UMTS is transmitted as an individual data connection in the cellular network, mobile television in the narrower use of the term is broadcast like conventional radio programs and is in principle independent of the cellular network. Since both technologies are often combined in one device, the service providers can be identical and a return channel is also possible via the telephone system, there is often confusion of terms.

Mobile television attracted greater attention with the soccer World Cup in Germany in the early summer of 2006. For the first time, games were broadcast live for mobile devices (cell phones) via digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) and also via UMTS. It was confirmed that many simultaneous users with the solution that relies on direct connections (UMTS) can lead to capacity problems and transmission disruptions, while the typical broadcasting in DMB, DVB etc. can supply an unlimited number of receivers.

Content

While the discussion about the right technology was widespread, there was less research into which video offers potential viewers want to see while on the move and which they actually use on small screens. TV content can still be broadcast in parallel via mobile phone TV, existing content can be modified or original mobile content can be newly developed.

The mobile operators began to UMTS introduction so to transmit television signals unprocessed to corresponding mobile phones, and also by DMB and DVB mainly traditional full programs are broadcast without conclusively determine whether the different usage situation and the small terminal placing new demands on the content.

Some communication scientists who research electronic mass media see this as a mistake by the providers, which contributes decisively to the low success or failure of the offers. A mobile television transmitter should be structured more like most radio transmitters, i.e. consist of snippets (clips) that do not exceed a certain length. The content of YouTube and similar video portals or podcasts on the Internet could serve as a model.

Mobile TV is mostly seen on smaller screens, which are often held in the free hand. In vehicles, for example, there are also larger devices for which the battery life is also irrelevant. Even as the resolution improves, however, the observation situation often remains restless and poorly illuminated, so that hardly any details can still be perceived.

Media forms that work under these conditions ("the sender is the broadcast") include music videos, skits and breakdown videos, short messages from all departments with comments and interviews, advertising, trailers and excerpts, pornography and erotic, bits of knowledge and quiz programs, recipes and tips, Contributions to classic magazine programs, short films, specially produced or newly edited series ( mobisode ). Textual headlines and diagrams can be more effective than moving images. Full-length movies and most classic series and most sports broadcasts are not suitable. Frequent repetition would be accepted as long as the content is not out of date.

Initial findings from studies with a larger number of users show that news is very popular content, followed by music clips, series and sports. Nonetheless, in the USA, for example, feature films for cell phones are being used: Sony Pictures provides its own channel for AT & T's offerings .

Usage behavior

From field studies, commercial mobile broadcasting and mobile communications offers, there is now sufficient knowledge about user behavior, i.e. who uses which form of mobile television, when, where and for how long.

The usage situation differs from that of classic television simply in that most devices only allow one or two viewers to be sensible.

Mobile television is used outside of one's own four walls, for example when waiting, in public transport or during the lunch break, but the largest field study in Austria showed that public transport is only the second most popular place to watch TV on the mobile phone, the most popular place to use it is at home. Various studies have tried to find out how much potential users are willing to pay for the offers and have come to different or even contradicting results, in some cases depending on the country.

Transmission standards

There are a wide variety of technical options for transmitting audiovisual content to mobile receiving devices. Some of these transmission standards build on each other, others compete with each other. Regional differences in particular have to be taken into account, which make uniform global regulation difficult. The standards are classified below in terms of their transmission path.

broadcast

While individual connections are established between each receiver and the transmitter in mobile radio networks, broadcast networks are characterized by the fact that the transmitter broadcasts its signal independently of the user. Every viewer sees the same thing, the required infrastructure is independent of the number of viewers and is therefore able to cater to a large number of viewers at the same time. One speaks of so-called broadcasting. Broadcast networks generally do not have their own return channel, but can be combined with mobile radio networks to enable interactive services.

In the absence of individual connections between recipient and sender, it is not possible to display individual content such as B. to offer video-on-demand via broadcast networks. The user is bound to the broadcast of the station and has no influence on the start of the broadcast.

For a long time in Europe there were two mobile broadcast standards that developed in parallel, DMB and DVB-H . The EU has now spoken out in favor of DVB-H. While DVB-H is in regular operation in Italy, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the nationwide start in Germany is delayed again and again for media law reasons.

Especially where not all of the country's mobile network operators have received a DVB-H license, they rely on receiving mobile television via DVB-T as an alternative. Thus, Vodafone in Germany this as a pilot project at the Cebit start of 2008. Cell phone manufacturers such as LG or Sagem have also presented or announced DVB-T capable cell phones.

In the USA Verizon and AT&T rely on MediaFLO , in Japan "1seg" is transmitted as part of the ISDB signal (1 of the 13 segments per channel).

DVB-H

The first commercial DVB-H service in Europe was launched in June 2006 in Italy by the mobile operator H3G and reached over 750,000 customers by the end of 2007.

In Germany, the Federal Network Agency awarded the license and frequencies for the technical operation of the transmission systems to Media Broadcast in 2007. The overall conference of the state media authorities decided in 2008 to award the license for broadcasting (i.e. content) to Mobile 3.0 ( joint venture of MFD and NEVA Media), the licensing itself will be granted step by step by the respective state media authorities . A consortium of three mobile network operators ( T-Mobile , Vodafone , O 2 ) had also applied for the license, but failed. A test broadcast ran from June to September 2006 in several major German cities. In the meantime, however, Mobile 3.0 has ceased broadcasting.

On February 29, 2008, the competent authority RTR in Austria awarded the DVB-H license to the consortium of Media Broadcast , Hutchison Drei Austria and One . The DVB-H offer from One and Drei, launched in May 2008, comprised 14 TV channels ORF eins , ORF 2 , ATV , Puls 4 , Pro7 , RTL , Sat1 , VOX , laola1.tv , LALA ( Universal Music TV), Red Bull TV , RTL2 , N24 , Super RTL and 5 radio stations: Ö3 , FM4 , KroneHit , Ö1 and LoungeFM . However, the DVB-H service could hardly attract viewers (estimated at a maximum of 10,000 to 15,000) and was discontinued at the end of December 2010.

In Switzerland, the DVB-H service was discontinued in March 2010.

DVB-SH

This is a new broadcast standard for processing satellite signals for mobile devices. As with normal television programs, there must be a direct "view" of the satellite. This makes reception more difficult in buildings, but DVB-H transmitters are available for this in urban areas. The specifications for DVB-SH are similar to the sister standard DVB-H. Satellite reception covers rural regions.

Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB)

In Europe, DMB played a temporary role, especially in Germany.

The broadcast of 5 television programs ( ARD , ZDF , NTV , Pro7, Sat1 , MTV ) in the DMB standard, marketed by the DMB platform operator MFD Mobiles Fernsehen Deutschland and service providers Debitel , Mobilcom and Simply under the name “watcha”, was in May 2006 in regular public service in Germany until April 2008 and was meanwhile available in 16 cities. The nationwide expansion by 2010 and an increase to 40 programs originally planned by the operator according to his own statements was no longer implemented. The offer was discontinued after 2 years because, according to the company, the number of customers never exceeded a low five-digit level. Another reason was that the EU Commission had defined the competing technical procedure DVB-H as the official standard for Europe.

DVB-T

Technical monitoring for DVB-T at ZDF in the broadcasting center in Mainz

In connection with mobile television, DVB-T is also mentioned as the third standard because DVB-T can also be received on the move by notebook users with the appropriate additional equipment and mobile phones equipped for this purpose. Due to the higher power consumption for DVB-T reception (compared to DVB-H), as it was originally developed for stationary use, DVB-T is not ideal for the battery life of mobile phones. In some countries, DVB-T is at least partially unencrypted and can be received free of charge by the user. The companies T-Mobile and Vodafone , which were inferior in the DVB-H award in Germany, announced at the end of April 2008 that they would be offering DVB-T compatible cell phones from May 2008. In Austria, the also defeated Mobilkom Austria has announced a mobile TV offer based on DVB-T via 3G data card for notebooks.

MediaFLO

MediaFLO is a standard developed by the American chip manufacturer Qualcomm for the transmission of television images to mobile devices. The acronym FLO in the word stands for "Forward Link Only".

The maximum possible data transfer rate should be up to 11 Mbit / s and the battery consumption of the mobile end devices should be significantly lower than with the previous standards (up to 4 hours with a standard battery). The time required to change channels should be reduced to approx. 1.5 seconds.

MediaFlo is being tested by the British company BSkyB . In the USA, Verizon and AT&T rely on MediaFlo.

ISDB / SBTVD

Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB) is used in Japan and allows the parallel broadcast of TV programs in different qualities, i. H. Programs in HDTV and programs for mobile devices are broadcast in parallel. In Brazil, the closely related SBTVD is used.

Cellular networks

A basic distinction can be made between two models for the transmission of audiovisual services in mobile radio networks. On the one hand, the user has the option of requesting video services individually and as required. In this context, one speaks of so-called video-on-demand. The transmission starts at a point in time that the user determines and is comparable to viewing a video stream on the Internet with a delay. The prerequisite for this procedure is the return channel available in cellular networks , via which the recipient requests the desired service. This individual connection is called a unicast.

The second potential distribution channel for audiovisual content in cellular networks are so-called live video streams. In contrast to unicast transmission, the user requests a running service, the start of which he cannot influence. Despite participation in a given transmission, an individual connection is established between each recipient using the service and the sender. Since the data stream sent is the same for all participants, it is called multicast. The most important mobile radio standard is UMTS , which has been used for a long time for the transport of audiovisual content. The newer mobile radio standard LTE (or 4G) should be even better suited for mobile television due to lower latency times as well as a more stable connection. In addition, it enables smooth or rarely annoying HD television.

A major problem with UMTS in connection with large data packets is the lowering of the data rate depending on the cell load. The more users use UMTS within a cell, the lower the transmission rate. The HSDPA transmission method is intended to counteract this problem by improving cell utilization. The great advantage of cellular networks is the extensive expansion, which guarantees high availability.

Since there are only volume-limited data tariffs in Germany and multimedia transmissions generally have a higher data consumption, the "risk" is greater that the data volume will be used up quickly. After using up the volume and throttling to GPRS speed, it is well known that only text messaging or surfing on pages with low-load content is possible; IPTV thus becomes impossible. Therefore, you should either book a higher data volume with regular use (usually> 1 GB is sufficient) or only watch TV for a short time. Mobile television without a prepaid tariff is almost impossible or very expensive, as the credit is used up extremely quickly.

The previous commercial offers in Germany are financed by pay TV models, while in Austria almost all mobile phone providers offer at least some TV channels on mobile phones free of charge for all customers, as Drei has been doing in Italy since June 2008.

Radio networks

When transmitting via networks ( WLAN / WiMAX / MBWA ), the user establishes a connection to a wireless network with his mobile phone. If this has an interface to the Internet, the user can also connect to the Internet. The possibilities of receiving audiovisual content are the same as in cellular networks. This transmission path does not quite meet the mobile requirements of cell phone TV because the technology and infrastructure are not yet so advanced or expanded. However, the importance of this transmission route could increase in the future.

Internet

In Germany there are two basic providers of mobile television via the Internet, so-called Mobile IPTV : Zattoo and Schoener-Fernsehen. The public broadcasters are freely available (some in HD). At Zattoo, the channels of the RTL Group and the ProSiebenSat1 Group are only available via subscription. These services can also be used on the home PC .

In Germany, where there has been no nationwide agreement on a technical standard for the distribution of cell phone TV via broadcast (DVB-H or DMB) for years due to the media law situation (distribution of licensing power to the federal states), there are repeated attempts to offer individual TV content on the mobile phone without transmitting TV channels in the actual sense (fixed program schedule, simultaneity for all viewers).

The video download offers in many countries include the offers of the mobile network providers on the respective mobile portals or the offer of Apple iTunes to subscribe to TV series and feature films. The personal program sequence is selected via a (mobile) web interface. Depending on the provider, generally accessible podcasts or special content are offered. The payment for the content is partly already included in the basic fees of the mobile phone providers, there are also monthly additional fees or pay-per-download as well as advertising-financed offers.

Depending on the offer, automatic updating and synchronization of the individual episodes u. U. in an hourly rhythm a television experience actually comes about.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ European Commission : http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/de/lvb/l24125.htm ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / europa.eu archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 18, 2007
  2. ↑ Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH : Privatfernsehgesetz (PrTV-G) ( Memento of the original from June 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rtr.at
  3. ↑ a b ORF : Results of the mobile phone TV study , July 11, 2007
  4. ↑ USA Today: Sony Pictures to offer movie channel on AT&T phones , March 31, 2008 (English)
  5. ^ Spiegel: TV cell phones in comparison , July 2, 2008
  6. ↑ DerStandard: Telekom satisfied - “3” with “MobileTV” growth , July 7, 2008
  7. ↑ Heise: Cell phone television via DVB-H is slowly running out of air , June 20, 2008
  8. ↑ Bieler Tagblatt: Start of broadcast without Bieler , June 23, 2008
  9. ↑ Vodafone: [1] , press release from Vodafone in January 2008
  10. ↑ NYTimes.com via Yahoo! Finance: Mobile TV Spreading in Europe and to the US , May 6, 2008, Overview of standards and penetration of mobile TV worldwide (English)
  11. ↑ Digital TV: Italy: World premiere for DVB-H , June 8, 2006
  12. ↑ Computerwoche : Expert: DVB-H could go on air immediately , November 23, 2007
  13. ↑ RTR: KommAustria awards mobile phone TV license: MEDIA BROADCAST GmbH is awarded the contract , February 29, 2008
  14. ↑ DiePresse: Handy-TV: "Drei" wants to offer three DVB-H cell phones , May 29, 2008
  15. ↑ Report on heise.de DVB-H also failed in Austria on October 14, 2010
  16. ↑ Swisscom: Swisscom discontinues cell phone TV broadcast by the television broadcasting mast on March 23, 2010
  17. ↑ heise: Broadcast deadline for mobile TV Watcha ( memento from May 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), April 30, 2008
  18. ↑ Golem: Vodafone: DVB-T mobile phones for the European Football Championship 2008 (update) , April 29, 2008
  19. ↑ Telekom press: Mobilkom starts single-handedly with mobile phone TV at Euro 2008 ( memento of the original from April 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 10, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.telekom-presse.at
  20. ↑ teltarif.de: Field test for the mobile phone TV standard MediaFLO , December 9, 2006
  21. ↑ Heise: AT&T also relies on mobile TV , May 1, 2008
  22. ^ The Inquirer: Brazil begins HDTV transmissions with Japanese standard , December 2, 2007
  23. ↑ DVB Project Office: H3G - TV Digitale Mobile –Italy , June 6, 2008 (English)

Web links

literature

  • Ralf Kaumanns & Veit Siegenheim: Cell phone TV - factors for a successful market launch. In: MediaPerspektiven 10/2006, pp. 498–509 [2]
  • Markets for mobile television , January 2007, of the German TV platform (members including ARD, ZDF, Kabel Deutschland, Siemens, Nokia, RTL, Landesanstalt für Kommunikation Baden-Württemberg, Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication IMK; PDF file; 653 kB)
  • Convergence of radio and mobile radio , August 2007, the German TV Platform (PDF file; 1.23 MB)

further reading

  • Brix Sandra: Mobisodes and Talking Heads: Format and program development for mobile television. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. March 2010. ISBN 978-3639239577