BANGALORE, INDIA: There is presently a great deal of industry hype surrounding 'mobile television'. Noted by some to be the next 'killer app' of the mobile sector, and dismissed by others as having no sustainable business model, mobile TV is a conjure of possibilities.

It lies at the eye of a maelstrom of technologies, network models and frequency bands, waiting for many trials to end and the manifestation of a clue as to the most practical and commercially viable direction.

Experiencing TV on handheld devices raises a whole new set of issues that have spawned several new broadcast technology platforms. Attracting the most attention globally is the digital video broadcast to handhelds (DVB-H) standard, which is derived from digital video broadcast terrestrial (DVB-T). The important difference is that DVB-H transmits the signal in bursts in order to conserve handset battery life. It also incorporates greater forward error correction, essential for boosting handheld reception.

Another significant difference is the data encapsulation technique. The DVB-H stream is an IP datacast at 200 to 500kbps/program, yielding up to 50 programs in an 8MHz channel. This resolution is sufficient for the tiny handset screen. In contrast, standard-definition DVB-T uses MPEG-2 (or MPEG-4) encoding at 4 to 5Mbps/program, yielding up to five 'standard resolution' programs per channel.

DVB-H is not the only mobile TV platform finding favor. Korea and China are the first to embrace terrestrial digital multimedia broadcast (T-DMB), derived from the Eureka 147 digital audio broadcast (DAB) standard. Moreover, Qualcomm has developed the forward link only (FLO) technology for the delivery of multimedia content. T-DMB, FLO and DVB-H have each addressed the same handset-related issues-battery life, reception and screen resolution-albeit in different ways.