Faultline: US Mobile TV moves at NAB begin to shape its ATSC M/H future Apr 16, 2008 – Rethink Research
The two powerful groupings that are chasing the standard for what we feel is
likely to be THE US standard for mobile TV, the ATSC extension called M/H for
mobile handheld, both used the NAB show in Las Vegas this week to push their
case and their readiness for a 2009 massive introduction of the technology.
And while the two were pronouncing their readiness for mass mobile TV take up
in 2009, they spent the best part of NAB ensuring that the US broadcasting
community at least fully understood the opportunity there. Signs were
scattered all over NAB pushing one or the other of the groupings, while both
had demonstrations of the technology live and trips around Las Vegas to prove
that the transmitters, 25 miles distant from the city, could reach every part
of it.
Lined up on one side is the US favored transmitter company Harris, probably
the best friend to free to air broadcasters here by a country mile, aligned
with Zenith, the US company that introduced the VSB signaling technology
behind the ATSC standard, which is owned by LG Electronics, the third member
of the team. Opposing that is an exceptionally powerful grouping in global
terms, with less local US influence – Korea’s Samsung,
Germany’s Rohde and Schwarz, the transmitter company that has more than
its fair share of mobile TV installations around the world, supported by
Nokia Siemens Networks, MobiTV, and SES Americom.
Each side put their own statements forcefully at two of the first press
conferences brought together for the show. Harris named new partners in
EXPway, Envivio and UDcast, all of whom are household names in Mobile TV
installations round the world – unexpectedly, because of its size,
EXPway is the EPG supplier to many trials, and to the best known 3 Italia
DVB-H system in Italy, with UDCast having a huge market share in IP
encapsulators and Envivio around 70% or more in mobile TV encoders to date
– so if picking the right partners was a guarantee of success, then the
Harris MPH (Mobile Pedestrian Handheld) standard would be a few months from
being rubber stamped. Harris has met these companies in overseas trials,
mostly for DVB-H, and has formed bonds with them. The other new Harris
partner is Triveni Digital which has added a new station-side software
platform to the equation. The entire system is said to be ready to install by
Fall 2008.
Envivio actually has a foot in both camps, only so far, on a trial basis, and
while Harris has always said that it would eventually create its own encoder
platform, it would be madness to jeopardize its chance at getting the ATSC
working party vote by using an untried encoder now.
UDcast has a new IP Encapsulator that works with MPH which is to deliver
mobile video IP content on the top of the ATSC standard transmission. Also at
the show UDcast said it has a system for delivering Mobile TV over a WiMAX
nework, which is says offers a combination of multicast and broadcast
channels, though there were few details.
Harris, at its conference, reeled off an impressive list of its announcements
for the show – a new Apex M2X digital exciter for MPH, a new Atlas
ISDB-T exciter for the burgeoning Brazilian market that will get to bulk
mobile TV ahead of the US, launching now, and a number of offerings in the
digital signage market where advertising in lifts, in stores and on sidewalks
is refreshed using broadcast technologies. As an aside Harris said that the
digital signage market was $4 billion today and would grow at 28% this year,
so a significant new market entry for the company. Harris also saw Mobile TV
as a $2 billion opportunity in what is currently an $11 billion broadcast
market, and after listing 64 new products, focused almost entirely on MPH.
One of the key issues is that new digital exciter and a new statistical
multiplexer product of its own. Harris is new to statistical multiplexing and
just how it will work in MPH is a bit of a mystery. The idea is that a single
6MHz, 19.4 Mbps signal, is used to offer HD for a single channel, one or more
copies of an SD TV channel and anywhere between 1 and 6 mobile TV channels.
These all have to share this bandwidth, and since the mobile TV is best
delivered in bursts (to save portable battery life) a multiplexer needs to
push all those signals into a single stream, matching what we assume is
variable bit encoding for the mobile signal, with the two other main signals.
Statistical Multiplexing works far more efficiently when 16 to 20 mobile TV
signals are being pushed together, especially when feedback of how they will
best crush up is fed back to the encoder and the two devices work tightly in
tandem, for instance in MediaFLO and in DVB-H.
But this is Harris spreading its wings and using the Mobile TV opportunity in
the US as a springboard to enter new markets. We would not be at all
surprised to see Harris broadening into neighboring markets on the back of
moves of this type, and that might just as easily be via acquisition –
for instance, acquiring Envivio would make so much sense for Harris right now
to control the encode process from end to end in mobile TV, and across all
the rapidly accelerating shift to digital TV, most often using DVB-T, around
the world.
One radio expert at the show told us that Harris would win the lion’s
share of the business to add digital exciters to all of the free to air
broadcasting transmitters in the US, in the run up to the digital switchover.
“The common conception is that all of these local TV stations have
already replaced their transmitters,” he said, “but in the analog
world each station has to be on the air 24 x 7 and that means having at least
two of everything, and there is an awful lot of buying which needs to happen
between now and February 2009 before they are ready for digital transmission,
never mind Mobile TV delivery.”
And it is with this in mind that Harris launched a new financing option which
would “align revenue and costs for local broadcasters who want to
install Mobile TV,” which we took as short hand to indicate a form of
aggressive vendor finance program, where the equipment can go in now, but
which can be paid for as stations find ways to monetize MPH.
A spokesman for LG talked us through the two trials that are going on at 6
stations around the country and at 2 stations in Las Vegas during the show,
saying that the signals had been robust in spectrum challenged areas, and
looking to a June timeframe for completion of that testing, and said that
Single Frequency Network lab testing was next on the list.
But the entire entourage of Harris has perhaps a bigger vision for how Mobile
TV and MPH will fit into the US landscape – talking of Channel change
spots for advertising and channel promotions, and using the IP transport
layer not just to offer an electronic services guide, but also to add voting,
e-commerce, digital signage updates and public safety announcements. One
example was of a fire department on the way to a fire receiving floor plans
of the building it is going to, or details of hazardous materials on site, as
they are traveling, using encrypted private channels. Harris also said that
it was a long way into discussions with Nielsen Media over audience
measurement capabilities for MPH, and expected it to launch with those
capabilities.
LG Electronics had two handsets ready, and although these appeared to have
external 4 inch antenna, there is a clear mission to have internal antenna by
the time these devices go into the field. GPS devices would soon be added to
the mix, so Mobile TV on a device that is not a phone, and of course in car
devices which are expected through Kenwood, strong in the US automotive
aftermarket.
“There are 100 million battery operated TV sets in the world
today,” said the LG spokesman, but he forgot to mention just how many
of these were up for replacement within the boundaries of the US, not many we
would expect.
There was also the mention of an Internet tablet coming to the market with
MPH, an expression most intimately associated with Nokia, but perhaps on this
occasion referring to a parallel LG planned product. The Nokia Internet range
is highly thought of and is expected to play a strong part in the Sprint
WiMAX devices rollout on it Xohm network.
There was also much talk about what to do with all the extra mobile TV
channels that this transition is expected to throw up. Of course this
hasn’t really happened in the only other market that has an analogous
Mobile TV transmission system, in Japan with ISDB-T (Brazil not having taken
off yet).
But if TV stations do want to maximize their usage of the new transmitter
exciters, they can offer local traffic channels, or local news channels using
other Harris offerings, with the Nexio AMP server being referred to as a TV
channel in a box, with a rapid news workflow system, and XDCAM cameras, built
in encoders, and the whole thing integrated with Apple’s Final Cut Pro
software, and the company says that it has sold 130 of these already.
Jumping over to the other camp much of the same was on offer, but perhaps
given that it was from companies not quite so integrated into the
broadcasting community in the US, it came over as slightly less well prepared
and a less fully considered strategy. This group, Rohde and Schwarz, Samsung,
Nokia Siemens Networks, MobiTV and SES Americom’s IP Prime has more
global power than the Harris LG combination, and it has great lobbying power
to sway standards bodies, as well as huge technological expertise, so it may
well swing the vote and end up with it’s A-VSB, initially proposed by
Samsung, as the US technology winner.
The group said that its platform is complete and ready to go, and that the
broadcast equipment comes integrated with the OMA BCAST service layer, which
given that it is already a global standard, is also already in place. It also
has demonstrations around Las Vegas, put up through local broadcasters’
existing transmitters.
OMA BCAST defines the higher level software protocols within the handset that
will work with the A-VSB physical layer, and many Mobile TV services around
the world, especially those considering DVB-H, are expected to use this as a
global standard.
Rohde and Schwarz also announced the necessary test equipment (as did Harris)
to test that signals are standard compliant, along with new ranges of gap
fillers that help build a constant signal strength in a territory, compatible
with ATSC, MediaFLO, DVB-T or H and other global TV standards.
While it as great to see the US market finally waking up to the potential for
genuine broadcast quality Mobile TV, the lack of questions and enthusiasm
from the audience or insight into vital this decision, showed that awareness
of Mobile TV still has a long way to go in the US, demonstrated by the fact
that Faultline asked the only questions at both presentations and at the
Mobile TV debate later that day.
We asked Harris president Tim Thorsteinson, what happens if Harris gets
pipped at the post by the rival proposal. “You will have noticed that
we have a new digital exciter,” he began, “and that it is
software driven, rather than our old MPH exciter which was hard wired. This
means that we can offer a different software stack that works with the rival
standard around 90 days later than our own offering, if the vote goes that
way.”
If the two standards proposals are that close together, it makes you wonder
why the two consortia cannot sit down and agree a compromise and save all
that important time, to ensure they are both ready for digital switchover in
February 2009. But then again, each have their own existing advantages and
don’t want those compromised.
Rohde and Schwarz for its part is saying that it has tested its exciter with
transmitters from “other” manufacturers, and that it works fine
with them and can be retrofitted onto many brands. Harris is of course the
brand it is after, because otherwise, even with a win at the standards level,
the device would not retrofit to the majority of transmitters already in the
market. Presumably the Rohde and Schwarz exciter can be adapted to the rival
standard in a similar time to Harris, and so neither team will be out of the
game come the end of this year, and many more participants may also enter the
market by then.
There was even one opinion, we believe unauthorized, which said that there
should be two standards and they should fight it out in the market. That
opinion was repeated in the Mobile TV debate, later that day. But it is clear
that the broadcasting community is going to have to attract the US cellcos to
the ATSC M/H standard once it is approved, in order to get them to stock and
subsidize devices which can receive it. No effort to sell Mobile TV around
the world has ever worked without the blessing of Cellular operators, and
their absence would be a huge set back for this standard. But getting
AT&T or Verizon interested in taking part is going to be infinitely
harder if the devices can only support one of these standards and view half
of the TV channels. Of course it may be the case that both Samsung and LG can
adapt their chips, radios and devices to pick up both service types, but
no-one has said that, and it seems an unnaturally divisive route to go down
for a standards body.
One thing that will obviate the involvement of AT&T and Verizon is to
come up with a plug in device, as NextWave has done for other mobile TV
systems, which attaches to existing handsets and delivers mobile TV to them
cheaply. Either Samsung or LG (or NextWave) could do that and it could open
the floodgates whether the cellcos are onboard or not.
CourtesyRethink
Research, publisher of Faultline, a weekly
feature on technology and innovation.
Faultline: US Mobile TV moves at NAB begin to shape its ATSC M/H future
