Mobile TV won't feed 3G junkies

When Vodafone joined the 3G mobile world in this country a couple of months ago, it wasn't video telephony I got excited about, it was so-called mobile TV. I had visions of flicking open my mobile and downloading a video feed of what was being broadcast. I didn't expect it to be live as I knew the content would have to be put onto a server and compressed so it could be sent over the mobile network.

But I expected it to follow live TV by a few hours and to give me a continuous stream so I might, for example, be able to watch the entire six o'clock news bulletin and the following current affairs show on my phone if I'd missed them when they were broadcast.

The reality at this stage isn't nearly as useful.

Yes, it's TV and it looks and sounds surprisingly good on the small screens of Vodafone's 3G mobile phones.

I had Sky TV running on the Sony Ericsson V800 for two-and-a-half hours before the battery ran flat, and I got similar playback times for the other 3G handsets.

But what wasn't so impressive was the regularity with which the news feed was looped. Every 60 seconds or so I was back watching the same update on the situation in New Orleans, followed by the weather forecast.

The feeds for TV3 and C4 loop about every 20 minutes and while you're not forced to watch through the ad breaks among the edited clips of Campbell Live, Sports Tonight and Nightline, there's a lot of repeated in-house promo clips for TV3. The service has promise but for $3.50 a week or $1.50 for a 10-minute session, I want more content updated more regularly.

I think what I had in mind when mobile TV was mentioned is more in line with what the Koreans are just beginning to enjoy - digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) - or true cellovision.

Phone makers like LG and Samsung are in the early stages of releasing live, multi-channel TV broadcasts for mobile subscribers in South Korea following operator SK Telecom's release of mobile pay TV broadcasts in May. In the US, phone maker Qualcomm has developed a service capable of delivering 15-20 live TV channels to mobiles at similar resolution to standard TV.

Technology called digital video broadcasting for handheld (DVB-H) is being developed by European phone maker Nokia and will do the same thing - deliver live news bulletins, TV shows and sports coverage to the mobile.

It can be done, but the challenge is sorting out the complex broadcasting rights and making phones small enough that don't lose their battery power quickly. Mobile broadcast TV is a leap ahead of the on-demand video clip downloads that Vodafone and Telecom now offer, but it's something I'd happily pay a premium for if I could get three or four live channels broadcast to my phone, 24 hours.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY