Mobile TV: Watching TV at work!
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.
While at the BBC, and for that matter, consulting for 3; I was a “Doubting-Thomas” when it came to mobile video / TV.
However smooth the picture, or compelling the content, other than a few niches, I didn’t think it was a flyer in the same way as we know that mobile music is, just because of the very human limitations of attention in a mobile context that would prevent you from being engrossed in mobile video in the same way you can be in mobile music.
Today I picked up internal trial hardware (the s90-powered 7700 that won’t be getting a commercial release, but Nokia uses as an experimental platform for new services) for mobile DVB-H digital TV broadcast, and it has immediately made me doubt my doubts.
It’s certainly got immediate wow factor (in a non-scientific survey of me and Chris, and the picture is smooth, a decentish-size (book of postage stamps, rather than postage stamp) and sound crisp over the headset.
Luckily there’s also a fair bit of english-language TV available on Finnish TV for me to understand. I have the handset for a month, so it will be interesting to see how mobile TV fits into my life over that time.
While I can’t go into too many details, the guys at the trial program have said it’s fine to blog general observations, so I will try to do so here.
Petafloptimism 
The attention problem of mobile video…
Have you never noticed how many people at the bbc seem to work perfectly successfully with a tv playing on their desk next to them?
I think people 5 to 10 years younger than I are so good at divided attention that this won’t be a problem for them.
I was discussing DVB-H with a colleague the other night and he said “what you have just described is a portable TV”.
Yes it is, and everyone has an understanding of how TV works and expectations of a portable telly.
I doubt people will accept the performance (and implicitly the bandwidth) limitations of these poor and rather expensive imitations of the 60 quid LCD TV or TV/DVD that are coming out of China and Korea.
Is this a case of being blinded by the technology?