Mobile DTV News from the Net

Aaron62 · 07-13-2009, 07:45 AM

Found a few news articles this weekend and thought I'd start an official thread to talk about them.

Quote:

Driving Mobile DTV from Coast to Coast
Stations buy gear, coordinate reception tests
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/12/2009 1:14:00 PM EDT
Now that mobile DTV transmission gear is commercially available, a number of stations have bought gear and are planning reception tests this summer and fall.

The most prominent market test in the near term is the seven-station trial in Washington, D.C. that gets underway later this month and is being coordinated by the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC). OMVC Executive Director Anne Schelle notes that Washington will also be "an interesting test-bed" for mobile DTV reception since the seven stations
are transmitting at different power levels and also include a VHF station in WUSA; the viability of VHF channels for mobile DTV has been questioned by some engineers because of the larger antennas VHF signals generally require.

OMVC, in partnership with Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV), will also be conducting reception testing in additional markets through August, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston and New York.

How the stations juggle the new mobile DTV streams with their existing high-definition and standard-definition services will also be a topic of interest. According to Harris VP Jay Adrick, who is helping the six D.C. stations ready their facilities with mobile DTV-capable exciters and encoders, most stations are devoting about 3.7 megabits per second of
their 19.4 Mbps DTV pipe to the mobile streams, which are encoded using MPEG-4 compression. Because the D.C. stations will be using a lot of forward-error correction (FEC) to ensure robust reception, only about a quarter of that bit-rate is available for transmitting audio and video.

"That translates into about 900 kilobits [per second] of payload, and we can put two or three services in there," says Adrick. "It's working out reasonably well."

Adrick notes that the ATSC-M/H standard allows a station to turn down the FEC and transmit a single video stream using only 900 Kbps in total. And encoder manufacturers like Harris, Tandberg and Harmonic say they
are already working with customers to compress their existing DTV services as efficiently as possible in order to free up room for mobile services.

Vendors say they are already selling mobile DTV product today.

Read the rest of the story here: Driving Mobile DTV from Coast to Coast - 2009-07-12 13:14:00 EDT | Broadcasting & Cable

Aaron62 · 07-13-2009, 07:48 AM

Here's another news report from over the weekend.

Quote:

Special Report: Mobile DTV Heats Up
D.C. trial begins this month; final standard likely by September
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/13/2009 2:00:00 AM EDT

Two years’ worth of work by broadcasters and technology vendors to develop a way for stations to transmit video to cellphones, laptops and other portable devices is starting to produce tangible results. A multi-station trial of the new mobile digital TV (DTV) technology kicks off in Washington, D.C., later this month, and a formal technical standard is expected by September. Individual stations in markets such as New York and Raleigh, N.C., are already broadcasting mobile DTV full-time, and a total of 70 stations across 28 markets have pledged to offer mobile DTV streams by year-end.

While the business models for mobile DTV are still being worked out, the technology got a boost toward commercialization last week when the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the U.S. digital TV standards body, raised the candidate ATSC-Mobile/Handheld (ATSC-M/H) standard to “proposed standard” status. A final standard could be in place by September, paving the way for consumer receiver devices to hit retail shelves in 2010.

“What we’ve all been shooting for is a complete standard by the end of the year, and there is no reason for concern in meeting that objective,” says Mark Aitken, director of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group and chair of the ATSC specialist group that drafted the ATSC-M/H standard.

Much of the standards work, including technology evaluations and field trials, has been spearheaded by the Open Mobile Video Coalition, a group of some 800 stations that have come together to promote mobile DTV. OMVC members helped broker a deal in May 2008 between consumer electronics giants LG and Samsung to avoid a prolonged standards battle between the two companies’ competing mobile DTV systems.

Since then, OMVC has kept pushing the process, announcing commercial rollout plans at the Consumer Electronics Show last January. The group selected Atlanta and Seattle as markets where “model stations” such as Gannett’s WATL and Belo’s KONG are broadcasting mobile DTV streams that vendors can use to check the performance of their products.

OMVC’s latest project is the seven-station mobile DTV trial in Washington, expected to go live by the end of the month. Participating stations include Ion’s WPXW; Gannett’s WUSA, a CBS affiliate; Fox’s WDCA; NBC’s WRC; WHUT, a PBS station owned and operated by Howard University; WNVT, the home of multicasting service MHz Networks; and WNUV, the CW affiliate in Baltimore run by Sinclair. The initial plan is for each station to broadcast a minimum of two mobile channels apiece, along with some electronic service-guide and alert data.

While initially billed as a consumer trial, the first phase of the work in D.C. will be to conduct “conformance testing” of some 20 vendors’ products, using the ATSC-M/H standard as it stood at NAB (software upgrades should be able to reconcile existing mobile DTV gear with the final standard). Real-world testing by consumers will comprise the second phase of the project and likely won’t happen until early 2010, when a meaningful volume of receiver devices should be available.

Read the rest of the story here: Special Report: Mobile DTV Heats Up - 2009-07-11 02:00:00 EDT | Broadcasting & Cable

O-O · 07-13-2009, 09:33 AM

Quote:

While initially billed as a consumer trial, the first phase of the work in D.C. will be to conduct “conformance testing” of some 20 vendors’ products, using the ATSC-M/H standard as it stood at NAB (software upgrades should be able to reconcile existing mobile DTV gear with the final standard). Real-world testing by consumers will comprise the second phase of the project and likely won’t happen until early 2010, when a meaningful volume of receiver devices should be available.

Still a ways out for sure, "early 2010". Hopefully they're picking some markets that aren't perfect conditions for testing while they work out the bugs.

Trip · 07-13-2009, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by O-O

Still a ways out for sure, "early 2010". Hopefully they're picking some markets that aren't perfect conditions for testing while they work out the bugs.

Here's a list: http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atscmph

Most of those are taken from the OMVC press release several months ago, though some have been corrected by people in the industry.

- Trip

O-O · 07-13-2009, 09:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trip

Here's a list: RabbitEars.Info

Most of those are taken from the OMVC press release several months ago, though some have been corrected by people in the industry.

- Trip

right on, thanks Trip. well, from the looks of it, they've got a pretty diverse group of cities.

I really need a new phone and wouldn't mind one with ATSC-M/H, I just don't want to wait 6 months. Mine is practically falling apart now.

Trip · 07-14-2009, 05:17 AM

I'm in much the same boat, except I'm hoping to wait it out. My cell phone's hinge is completely free (no resistance) but I'm waiting for the availability of a CDMA Mobile DTV phone. I plan to buy it and then bring it to my carrier to put on the network, if they'll let me. I think US Cellular will do it for me, I love that company so much.

I'm just itching to get one, even if there's no Mobile DTV signals in the area yet. I know it's coming; I'm interning at the station that's going to be "first in the group" (Schurz) to have it; possibly by the end of the year.

- Trip

O-O · 07-14-2009, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trip

I'm in much the same boat, except I'm hoping to wait it out. My cell phone's hinge is completely free (no resistance) but I'm waiting for the availability of a CDMA Mobile DTV phone. I plan to buy it and then bring it to my carrier to put on the network, if they'll let me. I think US Cellular will do it for me, I love that company so much.

I'm just itching to get one, even if there's no Mobile DTV signals in the area yet. I know it's coming; I'm interning at the station that's going to be "first in the group" (Schurz) to have it; possibly by the end of the year.

- Trip

Nice. I'm extremely interested to see if the ATSC-M/H tuner adds thickness to the overall size of the phone and screen resolution along with PQ. Wonder how they'll compare with the Chinese TV phones.

Piggie · 07-14-2009, 11:28 AM

I still think it's a jump to think the cell companies will be all over ATSC-M/H due to the fact their partners on the old Ch 55 now have a pay mobile TV service coming in the next generation phones (maybe some now, I don't keep up). Will they want to add a competitive service to their phones that is free and out of their control?

If they have both in a phone, Flo and MPH, they could share a broadband diode tuned receiver, but would need different decoders. If the decoding can be done totally in software with the same hardware, that improves the chances of some company like HTC that often leads the way on new phones to build one that does both.

(and aside to Trip: When the old ATT bought out the US Cell towers and customers here, US Cell was on TDMA. I think I do remember them only buying the parts of the US Cell network that TDMA. Too bad because even way back then there were the best cell in town in Gainesville back in the 1990s).