The Other Digital Broadcast Standard
January 7, 2007, 6:32 PM
Scott Fulton, BetaNews: Ross Rubin is NPD's director of industry analysis. Ross, I hear some stories that say that we’re going to see some attempts at an American implementation of a portable digital TV, a DVB-H standard TV. I guess I’m scratching my head and saying, first of all, is there enough demand in the States for such a thing, and second, since we’re already changing our digital video standards here – by 2009, we have to, DTV will have shifted over – why do we then need a DVB-H for a portable receiver when there’s already going to be firm network in place, at least in this country, for 480i digital television?
Ross Rubin: DVB-H is really targeting a different market. You’re talking about products that wouldn’t be distributed through carriers?
Scott Fulton: I’m thinking, if you’re a DVB-H customer, that you’re signing up like with cell phone service, you’re signing up with a carrier service.
Ross Rubin: Well, there’s a service provider. So for both Modeo and MediaFLO, their first targets are the carriers as the service provider, and integrating the chipset support into handsets. Other than perhaps the iPod, there aren’t a lot of other high-volume products out there that would be good portable targets for on-the-go, live television reception. So that’s really where both of those technologies are being marketed, at least in the US. I don’t know if there are stand-alone providers in, say, Korea or Europe, but again at least a start, particularly because MediaFLO has such close ties to Qualcomm, they’re aiming at cellular providers.
Scott Fulton: It seems to me that, if you’re going to have this kind of a service, you’ve got to have programming that goes over it, and yet the programming that people want is already tied to either a broadcast or a cable model. Anybody developing DVB-H service is going to have to start over from scratch, aren’t they?
Ross Rubin: There are a lot of assets they can repurpose.
Scott Fulton: When you say “repurpose,” that sounds like “rerun.” I sense the “Welcome Back, Kotter Channel.”
Ross Rubin: I don’t necessarily believe these services will be sold with ‘70s sitcoms, but the nature of portable television viewing, which is going to be a relatively new phenomenon in terms of a cell phone model...there’s some precedent in terms of services like GoTV and MobiTV, but it will likely be more clip-oriented, shorter form kinds of entertainment, maybe news shows or sports summaries or music videos, things like that. Maybe even some half-hour shows, but again, just as we’ve seen on the iPod, it’s more about shorter-form entertainment in a mobile setting than enjoying a movie on the two-and-a-half inch screen. That would especially be the case for these technologies, because they are broadcast technologies and so it’s live reception.
Scott Fulton: We’re not talking about time-shifting. We’re talking about short-form stuff, but it’s on a schedule.
Ross Rubin: Right, so if you go through the train or something, the tunnel underground and lose reception, you may not be able to have access to it.
Scott Fulton: At 1:15, it’s a video sent in by Harriet in Tempe, Arizona, of her cat chasing a mouse.
Ross Rubin: It’s going to be more commercial content than YouTube kind of material.
Scott Fulton: This is like the story of the personal computer. It took off once there was the killer application. I would think that if you’re limited to a 15-minute program, or a short-form program, it had better be a killer program to sell this device.
Ross Rubin: Well, I don’t think it needs to be that compelling. This is more of a time-killer. You’re waiting online at the bank, that kind of experience.
Scott Fulton: They could hand these out at the bank. “Thank you for waiting. Here’s a MobiTV. Please enjoy with our complements.” Then they’ll have a Best-of-YouTube show where we can watch the video of AACS being cracked, over and over again.
Ross Rubin: Very “meta.”
Scott Fulton: Always a pleasure, Ross. Thanks.
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