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Cell Phones: Can You TV Now?
Cell Phones: Can You TV Now?(AP) The screens may be tiny and the batteries overworked, but the wireless industry is bringing TV to a cell phone near you.
With the mammoth International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a backdrop, Verizon Wireless planned Friday to detail a robust new service for mobile phones, one that promises better-quality audio and video — albeit custom-designed for the numerous constraints of a handheld device.
Verizon also plans to announce a major increase in the number of markets where its high-speed wireless technology will be available, as well as wider coverage in the 20 markets where it was introduced last year, according to a company source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The new Verizon offering, along with other multimedia wireless services unveiled at CES in Las Vegas, marks a big step in the industry's push to generate revenue from more than just phone calls.
Consumers have already shown an appetite for mobile e-mail, Web browsing, music and video games, but many experts view the public fascination with TV and movies as an especially potent lure for premium wireless services.
"Video is leaps and bounds above anything else" in terms of importance to users, said Roger Entner, an industry analyst for The Yankee Group. "This can certainly bring people in, because it's really eye candy."
"With EV-DO, basically all the promises we have had for so long about (next-generation) wireless data can come true," Entner said. "With EV-DO you can have full-fledged TV on a handset," he said, noting that the speedier networks also make downloads of music and video games far less tedious.
But even with more bandwidth, it's not so easy to replicate the big screen experience on a device with limited screen size, audio quality, processing power, storage capacity, and battery life — the last of which tends to suffer with improvements to any of the other factors.
Further, it's not very clear how long users will want to stare at such a small screen, or whether they'll be in a position to watch anything longer than a few minutes while roaming about.
Nonetheless, innovations with display technologies could make full-length programs and movies more appealing in the future. For instance, thin-film displays stashed inside the device might be unfurled for viewing. Or special eyeglasses might project the image directly in front of the eyes.
"People don't listen to a silver-dollar-sized speaker on the iPod. We put in high-quality headphones and get totally immersed in the music," said Phil Leigh, president of Inside Digital Media, a research firm in Tampa, Fla.
He said video needs an analogous development with eyeglass screens — something that has proven technologically, but not economically feasible for consumers.
Technology companies are so confident about future demand for mobile TV that Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. are developing competing wireless chips designed specifically to receive and process video signals more efficiently.
Qualcomm also is investing $800 million to launch a national cellular TV service in 2006 over its own spectrum, broadcasting up to 20 channels for wireless carriers to sell their customers.
Thanks to bzprof2002.
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