DVB-H will win mobile TV battle

A DIGITAL TV standard, DVB-H, will win out over rival technologies predicts a new report from Frost & Sullivan. "Even if it (DVB-H) is a few years down in line,” explains Frost & Sullivan ICT industry analyst, Pranab Mookken.

One of DVB-H's supposed advantages is its ability to backward integrate with its fixed terrestrial counterpart digital video broadcast-terrestrial (DVB-T), says Frost & Sullivan. The report does predict, however, that it will take until 2010 at least for the technology to cover most of Europe.

In the meantime, "broadcasters and operators may consider the use of DAB-IP and T-DMB delivery mechanisms for the interim period before the introduction of DVB-H," Mookken suggests. "Also, successful trials over DAB-IP and a readily available mobile TV packaged product from BT Movio could tempt operators to experiment with these alternatives."

In effect, the report is pretty dismissive of rival technologies like satellite-DMB (S-DMB) and terrestrial-digital media broadcast (T-DMB). It also doesn't think Qualcomm's MediaFLO will get very far.

But what about using another standard - TDtv? See Another standard for mobile TV emerges. The INQ's not convinced that operators will pay governments for the additional spectrum that DVB-H requires in the UHF band. Not after being stung so badly by 3G. And with TDtv, most operators already own the relevant spectrum.

The jury's still definitely out on this one. µ

L'INQ
Frost & Sullivan