Mobile TV

The words of the

European Union's (EU)

telecoms commissioner

Viviane Reding, delivered at the

launch of DVB-H as the EU's

standard of choice for mobile TV,

should be considered a clarion

call to those broadcasters that

have delayed their long-term

commitment to this new platform,

citing the uncertainty over the

myriad of available standards.

Having provided regulatory

guidance as to the standard that

should be adopted across Europe,

the EU has given broadcasters the

opportunity to focus on the other

issues that need to be resolved

before a mass-market mobile TV

roll-out is possible.

The long-term importance of the

EU's support of DVB-H cannot be

underestimated as the whole

mobile TV market is potentially

worth more than the sum of its

parts. Any fragmentation driven by

the use of proprietary standards

would inevitably damage the

ultimate potential of the sector.

Interoperability is key - especially if

convergence is to continue to

precipitate the consolidation we

have begun to see in the broadcast

and telecoms sectors. Broadcasters

wanting to benefit from the huge

potential of mobile TV can now

address the technical and business

case issues with a major piece of

the jigsaw already in place.

Incumbent broadcasters,

especially terrestrial broadcasters,

have been under pressure from

their satellite and cable

competitors for many years and

now have added competition from

IPTV. Mobile TV is a key

opportunity for them to

differentiate themselves, as they

John Maguire outlines the technology optionsand business models available to broadcasterswanting to penetrate the mobile TV market

Wait-and-see is not anoption for mobile TV

John Maguiregeneral manager,consumer mobile,S3

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Visit us at Amsterdam7-11 September 2007Stand 1.171

Mobile TV

page twenty six www.csimagazine.com Cable & Satellite International sept-oct 2007

can deliver the same recognisable content

and user experience at home and on the

move, with the additional benefit of cross-

platform familiarity and usability, potentially

utilising both DVB-T and DVB-H.

One of the biggest issues for

broadcasters to address is how to best

form relationships with all the parties in the

value chain. Traditionally, broadcasters

have strong relationships with content

owners and aggregators and have a deep

knowledge of how to deploy and manage

secure content delivery to the masses. In

addition, because the broadcasters' license

content directly from the content owners,

they are already engaging in cross-platform

distribution licensing deals to satellite,

terrestrial, broadband and mobile. As

the cellular operators enter this space,

particularly in the shared networks that

are likely to develop across Europe, they

will typically obtain a licence to mobile

content via an aggregator. This is a big

disadvantage to cellular operators wishing

to enter quad or triple play markets as they

have to re-negotiate deals for the same

content, multiple times.

The strength of these existing

relationships should allow broadcasters to

extract the maximum benefit from the

opportunity that mobile TV presents.

However, compared to the cellular

operators, who have intimate relationships

with individual consumers, the

broadcasters' relationship with the end

customer is relatively weak. Cellular

operators have access to a huge amount

of information about their customers,

which will be invaluable when the market

matures and personalised advertising

becomes more prevalent.

Broadcasters have a choice to make

as to whether they partner with individual

mobile operators to share the cost or

whether they invest in their existing

broadcast infrastructure and offer aggregation

services or content to multiple mobile

operators. Sites and planning for transmitters

are of ever increasing concern especially in

the developed world. There will be a land

grab in order to secure enough locations to

build these new transmission networks, but

the traditional broadcasters have a huge

head-start in this area. The technology is

available to support DVB-H and DVB-T on

the same multiplex, but it has not yet been

adopted simply because spectrum for DVB-H

is so hard to find. However, when the

mainstream broadcast operators do get

access to more spectrum, they will benefit

from greater efficiency supporting both

DVB-H and DVB-T networks.

Handset encoding and decodingRegardless, in order for all of the players

in the industry to get to market at all, the

technology needs to deliver high quality

content to their target audiences in a way

that maximises the number of devices that

can be used to receive the service.

Maximising both ARPU and the addressable

market is a must. The key issue for

broadcasters and operators is the lack of

availability of suitable handsets.

Support for broadcast TV is increasing in

high-end mobile phones, and Open Platform

handheld devices running OS, such as

Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux, allow

mobile DTV applications to be upgraded by

means of a downloadable software client.

However this is still not ideal as the device

capabilities of mass-market phones are

often not sufficient to enable the delivery of

mobile TV content. While software-based AV

decoders are continuing to improve, the

majority of DVB-H phones that have been

launched into the market have some form of

hardware acceleration for the decoder (in

addition to the tuner) that adds to the total

BOM price. S3 believes the spread of

mobile TV-enabled devices will range from

high-end car navigation systems through to

low cost feature phones and have already

licensed into each of these markets. This

dictates that mobile content must be re-

provisioned, re-purposed or re-scaled to be

suitable for the screen sizes and processing

power being used.

There are a number of schools of thought

regarding how this might be achieved.

Specialist encoder developers are already

working on solutions that can take a single

feed and produce outputs at both D1 and

QVGA or QCIF resolutions. This enables the

broadcasters to produce both HD and SD

streams, together with one purpose for

mobile at no extra cost. Other pre- and post-

processing techniques are being developed

for both the encoding and the decoding

process. For example, feature highlighting

improves the viewing of ball sports such as

football by automatically highlighting fast

moving objects in otherwise static scenes.

Examples on the device side include

improvements in video scaling and contrast

modification, which dynamically adapts the

contrast of incoming video stream to better

match the performance characteristics of the

mobile device screen. These techniques will

be important in order to re-produce content

appropriate for a variety of devices with

different screen characteristics and sizes.

Another interesting development is that the

majority of companies currently deploying

mobile TV services are specifying a TV-out

capability on their handset, to allow users to

view their content on a bigger screen when

not on the move. The concept of using the

handset as a portable set-top box or secure

rights management agent will impact on the

way that content is re-provisioned and re-

purposed, since having compressed it for use

on a small screen there is now a requirement

to expand it again without a discernable loss

of quality.

A proactive approachThere is a concern held by broadcasters and

content owners that mobile TV delivered by a

cellular operator could cannibalise their

existing TV market, particularly if the TV out

function is used. However, if broadcasters

take a proactive approach to their

involvement in mobile TV they will be able to

expand the market rather than suffer a

shrinking one.

One solution to the problem of how to

provide a suitable signal for the range of

“There are a number of schools of thought regarding how content can be re-purposed or re-scaled.”

DVB-H handsets

Mobile TV

devices enabled to receive mobile TV is

hierarchical encoding; a technology which

is already used by some of the mobile TV

delivery standards deployed in the US.

Rather than broadcasting a brand new

mobile signal, extra information is

broadcast to improve reception and viewing

on mobile devices. MPH and A-VSB both

carry the basic broadcast ATSC signal

that's already being used by the terrestrial

broadcasters in the US and they piggyback

a smaller signal on top of that, allowing

users to receive the signal on a mobile

device. MediaFLO also allows a slightly

different form of hierarchical transmission,

which it calls layering. A content stream can

contain a low-bandwidth, robust signal for

viewers in poor signal areas with additional,

less robust video information layered on

top for viewers in areas where there is

good reception.

Standards evolution in the US has

reached a critical point and the ATSC

has recently received ten submissions

in response to its Request for Proposals

(RFP) for its Mobile and Handheld Standard

(ATSC-M/H) from companies such as

Nokia, LG, and Samsung, all of whom have

strong links with currently available mobile

TV technology. The level of interest in the

standard is excellent news for the mobile

TV sector and the ATSC's decision will help

clarify and standardise delivery technology

in the US and beyond.

In Europe, broadcasters have the

opportunity to simulcast existing

broadcast content for mobile standards

such as DVB-H or DVB-SH in order to

maintain the users' cross-platform

familiarity with broadcast content.

However, this simulcast relies on the use

of advanced codecs and hardware AV

decoders in the mobile device, in order to

be successful. As mentioned previously,

relying on H.264 and AAC+ (or HE-AAC)

enabled devices reduces the addressable

population quite considerably. S3 has

identified this as a key issue and has

been working with equipment vendors to

enable operators and broadcasters to

deliver low-cost mobile TV solutions for

connected and non-connected devices to

seed the market.

Broadcasters are now in pole position

to use their existing infrastructure and

relationships with content providers and

their knowledge of conditional access

to extract the maximum benefit from

the opportunity that mobile TV presents.

Safe in the knowledge that DVB-H will be

the standard of choice, at least in Europe,

there is also an opportunity for

broadcasters to make use of current and

emerging technologies to target both large

screen and small screen devices with high-

end and low-end processing power without

the need to broadcast multiple signals.

However, the competition from cellular

operators will rapidly increase as they

overcome their technical challenges and

build relationships with content and

conditional access providers.

John Maguire is general manager

of consumer mobile at Silicon

& Software Systems (S3).

CSI

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Visit us at Amsterdam7-11 September 2007Stand 1.171

“Relying on H.264 and AAC+ enableddevices reduces the addressablepopulation quite considerably.”