KEY POINTS:
Entertainment executives say it is the "weapon of choice" for a generation of tech-savvy TV viewers but the mobile phone is proving a tough device to deliver television to despite the efforts of an industry to bring movies and TV shows to the smallest of screens.
In the bustling halls of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, new mobile phone handsets emerged that are capable of displaying numerous channels of TV content in real-time on high-resolution screens.
Indeed, such services are already showing promise in parts of the world. Telstra revealed that 70,000 subscribers are receiving Foxtel pay TV on their mobiles, while French content provider Canal+ said 250,000 mobile subscribers are watching its programmes on mobiles.
European mobile operator Orange was estimated to have nearly 500,000 mobile TV subscribers. But the heads of mobile content from some of the world's biggest TV networks said fundamental issues had to be overcome before mobile TV took off.
BBC Worldwide's head of mobile, Peter Mercier, said a bad user experience, a "complicated" business model and technological complexity meant mobile TV wasn't ready for show time.
"This is nowhere near a mass-market proposition and nowhere near as simple for a broadcaster to find a compelling place in," said Mercier.
While the cost of securing rights for mobile content was considerable - the BBC paid out nearly 100 million in royalties in total to rights owners last year - Mercier said a lack of clarity around what consumers actually want to see on their mobiles was a more fundamental issue facing the technology.
"The jury is still out, we're experimenting. I don't know if its short form or long form or linear channels versus on-demand," he said.
Stanley Fertig, a senior vice president at HBO, maker of hit shows like The Sopranos, Lost and Rome said consumers were generally paying too much for mobile TV content.
"This is really not that complicated. All we have to do is give consumers whatever they want, whenever they want it, wherever they want it."
Fertig's pragmatism hasn't always gone down well with mobile operators he is seeking to partner with. He had offered to give advertising-supported episodes of Sex in the City to mobile operators for free, but they had turned down the offers, unwilling to move away from the pay-per-view model.
Mercier said there were fundamental issues, such as getting mobile operators to invest in mobile TV content the way other types of pay TV operators do.
Stuart Collingwood, a senior vice president at Sling Media, maker of the Slingbox which allows users to replay their cable TV service at home on a computer or phone via the internet, said research of Slingbox users showed they were willing to watch long-form content on mobiles.
"It's familiar content that we're used to at home. Many of our customers never actually use a Slingbox outside of their house," he added, pointing out that lack of a commuter culture in some countries wasn't a barrier to take-up as people were increasingly watching content on small screens at home.
MTV's vice president of content and operations, Gary Ellis, said people wanted more of a "TV-like experience" on their mobiles and that the youth-orientated network had done well with packaging full length shows for mobile TV.
Technology vendors at the congress all have mobile TV in their sights, but have different ideas about how best to deliver it.
Swedish equipment maker Ericsson was showing off mobile TV delivered via Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service, which uses 3G mobile networks to deliver TV channels to mobiles.
Rivals Alcatel and Nokia showcased DVB-H technology which involves mobile TV being broadcast to phones independently of the mobile network. State-owned network operator Kordia has been trialling DVB-H technology locally.
AGREED
* There's no business case for making content solely for mobile phones.
* On-demand content wins out over linear content broadcast to subscribers as the former givers them more flexibility.
* The jury is out over whether people want to watch longer TV shows or movies on their mobiles.
* The mobile TV experience to date hasn't been up to scratch.
* Peter Griffin attended the Mobile World Congress as a guest of Ericsson. Read his daily technology blog at www.nzherald.co.nz/techblog
