New Technology TV

One of the major developments that many the mobile phone and TV production industries are both banking on is a surge in interest in watching TV on small screens. This is largely fueled by the mobile phone industry itself which is looking for ways to gain market share and increase profits in an environment where the market for the products and services it currently offers is pretty much saturated. The general idea is that if mobile communications service providers can offer the option of watching video on mobile phones- and maintain a high level of quality with that video- they will attract a whole new group of customers and gain a competitive edge on companies that don't adopt the technology as quickly or effectively. Of course delivering video to a hand held device (the service theoretically wouldn't be limited to mobile phones) has its share of technical problems and the questions that go with them. For instance, should the video be broadcast like with over the air TV, or should the video be on demand? Should the video be scaled to fit the screen of the device, or should it just be delivered in its original form and let the viewer sort it out? These questions and more are gradually being ironed out by the industry.

In actuality, technologies to distribute both types of video are being pursued. In general, the idea of broadcasting video is much more practical in many ways. In fact, many local TV stations around the country- which are gearing up to broadcast exclusively in digital TV format by 2009 anyway- are waiting for the small screen TV market to open up. These stations are preparing to transmit small screen versions of their normal programming alongside normal digital TV transmissions. The small screen version would broadcast digitally on a separate frequency and would feature content specifically designed to be viewed on a small screen. The content- as well as any advertising- might be specifically tailored to the interests of a more mobile audience than the normal programming would be.

Video on demand for mobile devices would be considerably more complicated to pull off, but a number of companies are trying to do it just the same. The complication comes from the fact that the transmission is wireless. That means that in order for a mobile device to receive video, there has to be some kind of authentication protocol between a server that's sending the video and the device that's receiving it. Essentially, the transmission would have to be encrypted a certain way in order to tell the receiving device that the continually streaming data is part of the same video clip rather than part of a transmission meant for another device. This entire situation is further complicated by the fact that such a system may have to deal with thousands of people in any given service area demanding their own video feeds at a given time. This could be an issue because the servers only have a finite capacity and there's only a finite amount of wireless bandwidth. You can see why broadcast video is much more practical.

Of course, even with all of the hype and enthusiasm among companies and individuals who are trying to develop this technology one important question remains unanswered: will consumers care?