MPEG-4

Coding Technologies, a provider of audio compression technology for digital broadcasting, mobile music and the Internet, has announced that Motorola has entered into a patent license agreement with the company. Coding
Technologies is the developer of the MPEG-4 aacPlus audio codec.
Motorola joins a number of the world's wireless device
manufacturers, including Nokia, SonyEricsson and LG as a licensee of aacPlus.

Spanish Mobile TV

In an attempt to speed up the launch of DVB-H mobile TV, the Ministry of Industry has opened public consultations with all key players involved in the market up to next April 26 aimed at laying the groundwork for the launch of the service by year end.

BBC launches mobile TV trial

The BBC has revealed plans to offer a range of TV and radio networks to 3G mobile phones. The trial, scheduled to run for up to 12 months, will run on the Orange, Vodafone and 3 mobile networks. Significantly O2, which has been involved in a series of DVB-H mobile TV trials, is not included in the trial.

Channels featured will be BBC One, BBC News 24 and BBC Three, though some sports content will not be included. Eight radio stations will also be included: Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 6 Music, BBC 7 and Asian Network. Missing is the BBC’s news and sports station Radio 5 Live. The trial will get underway within a month.

Channels including Sky News and Sky Sports News are already streamed live on UK 3G networks. (JC)

WIMAX HDTV MOBILE TV JRC and Runcom Completed the Development of Mobile WiMAX Base Station - Assodigitale - Associazione Italiana Operatori Industria

"Running a High Definition TV application over a Mobile WiMAX Network enabled us to demonstrate the fantastic potential of Mobile WiMAX as a Broadband Access Technology" said Israel Koffman, Runcom's VP of Marketing; "The collaboration with a leading company in radio technology such as JRC enabled the team to bring OFDMA technology to perform one of its highest records."

Alvarion Partners with NDS and MobiTV to Demo Mobile Wimax TV

"Our companies are cooperating in order to demonstrate mobile TV over WiMAX anytime, anywhere and on any device," said Joseph Deutsch, VP Product Marketing, NDS. "Alvarion's 4Motion solution, together with our core VideoGuard CA and DRM solution, supports the full range of video services, giving carriers the assurance that only paying subscribers gain access to content while offering various business models to consumers and increasing average revenues per user (ARPU)."

Spectrum Key To The Development Of Mobile TV In Europe

Europe : Mobile network operators in Europe called for more spectrum to be made available for the provision of mobile television, echoing one of the findings in the final report of the European Mobile Broadcasting Council (EMBC), an initiative of the European Commission. While the EMBC report highlights the great variety of technical solutions to the provision of mobile broadcast services, such as 3G network-based video streaming, MBMS and DVB-H, DMB and satellite broadcast solutions, it notes that a lack of spectrum could limit the development of some of the new mobile TV platforms available.

Mobile TV warned to standardise

EC telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding said that if the industry did not agree on one, she would do it for them.

Ms Reding warned that Europe risked losing a chance to be a global player in the burgeoning mobile TV market.

She made her comments during a speech to delegates at the Cebit technology fair in Hanover, Germany.

Large-scale trials of TV on mobile handsets are already happening across the world as phone firms try to find out if consumers want to watch programmes on the go.

This comes as a surprise to no one!

"Audiovisual without Frontiers" Directive

The Commission unveiled on 9 March a consolidated text of the modernised "Television without Frontiers" Directive. After a first reading in the European Parliament and the Council, there is now broad agreement with the Commission about the future legal framework for Europe's audiovisual sector. The new rules, which have been called for especially by the European Parliament, are a response to technological developments and create a new level-playing field in Europe for emerging audiovisual media services (video on demand, mobile TV, audiovisual services on digital TV). European TV- and filmmakers will be given more flexibility to produce digital content which they can then make freely available to consumers thanks to advertising. The new Directive reaffirms the pillars of Europe's audiovisual model, which are cultural diversity, protection of minors, consumer protection, media pluralism, and the fight against racial and religious hatred,. The Commission also proposes to ensure the independence of national media regulators. The consolidated text of the new Directive will now go into a second reading by the European Parliament and Council.

No hurry on mobile TV, says Telstra (, MARCH 07, 2007)

TELSTRA says it is no hurry to jump on the mobile television bandwagon just yet, as it adopts a wait-and-see stance to the new broadcasting technology.

The standard known as digital video broadcasting handheld (DVB-H) has been tested in a number of markets around the world - including Australia - with commercial services recently launched in Albania, Italy and Vietnam.

Dump the TV set, watch the web instead - tech - 03 March 2007 - New Scientist Tech

WATCHING programmes on your television set is so last century.

Television studios are increasingly using the net to transmit their programmes to viewers on demand.

While this is fine when a relatively small number of people are downloading files at different times, if the internet were to transmit live television broadcasts to millions of viewers simultaneously, the sudden demand for bandwidth could create a huge bottleneck.

Now a British company has developed a way to send live video to millions of computers at once without overloading the web. The system, called the Live Delivery Network, will be launched next month by London-based firm Skinkers. It uses Pastry, a peer-to-peer distribution tool developed by Microsoft to transmit the broadcasts. This means every user who receives the broadcast also passes parts of the file on to other users. In this way live video feeds, which eat up bandwidth, can be distributed to millions of users without putting impossible demands on a central server.