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Friday Will Be FLO Day for Qualcomm
Qualcommm’s (QCOM) MediaFLO mobile television service has the potential to reach 40 percent more people once the DTV transition occurs on Friday. The switch from analog television signals to digital television signals had been scheduled for mid-February, but concerns that a subset of the population weren’t adequately prepared for it led Washington to legislate a four-month delay. That hold-up effectively stopped Qualcomm from launching service in 15 new markets, among them San Francisco, Houston, Miami and Boston, where it owned rights to the analog spectrum being used by local television stations to transmit their signals.
But the end is in sight for Qualcomm, which has the equipment in place, the power turned on, and is ready to send more television to more places the second it has access to those radio waves once the DTV transition occures on June 12. It expects its signals to reach 200 million people, about 60 million more than it reaches today. This is a positive step for Qualcomm’s service, which has seen relatively slow adoption on mobile devices, based on outside over-the-air mobile TV viewing numbers provided by comScore. In addition to increasing its availability to more people in more cities, Qualcomm earlier this year signed an agreement to get MediaFLO on more devices. It inked a deal with Audiovox to build MediaFLO access into its in-car entertainment systems, as well as one with with ProTelevision Technologies to make devices that can attach to a cell phone, and allow that phone to receive the MediaFLO service. Together they should help Qualcomm address the limitation of having MediaFLO built into relatively few handsets. Will they be enough? Stay tuned.
Nielsen Data Offers Real Reason ISPs Are Metering (Hint: Video!)
A report out today from Nielsen shows why Internet Service Providers and telecommunications equipment vendors are increasingly demonizing video. It consumes a lot of bandwidth, and could compete with an ISP’s existing video businesses, but the worst part is that it’s rapidly becoming more popular to the average consumer. Get the stats and the full story over at GigaOM.
Coming Soon: 2 Ways to Watch “American Idol” On the Go
The Open Mobile Video Coalition said today that it will begin broadcasting over-the-air mobile television to devices in Washington, D.C., later this summer. Also today, Qualcomm, which operates a competing over-the-air television technology, said it’s licensed its FLO software to ProTelevision Technologies (formerly Philips TV Test Equipment). That means Qualcomm’s MediaFLO technology could become available in more devices than the five or six cell phones that can currently receive the signal. While both announcements are big news for competing efforts in the nascent mobile television industry, the success of each venture may depend on which effort can win the rights to broadcast hot content to mobile watchers. For more, check out the post over at GigaOM.
The Twilight Problem: Why Metered Broadband Could Suck
When it comes metered broadband, most consumers don’t understand how its implementation could affect what it costs them to download content. So I decided to compare how much, depending on which of the nation’s top ISPs’ metered bandwidth plans you choose, it would cost to rent the teen vampire flick Twilight. And what did I find? That in almost all cases, the decision to download the movie will cost more than just the $3.99 rental fee — between 65 cents and $20.60 more. For more on the math and the costs under each ISP, check out the story at GigaOM.
Chumby and Broadcom Hope to Bring the Web to TV
Broadcom said today that it would make sure content from Chumby, a nascent widget syndication effort for televisions, would run on its chips for digital televisions and set-top boxes. Shriraj Gaglani, a senior director of business development for Broadcom, thinks Chumby will get consumers psyched about accessing the web through their TVs.
He likens the Chumby platform to a cell phone’s application store and says, “What we’ve felt we lacked in the ecosystem is the critical mass of apps and services that can leverage broadband televisions.”
For anyone who recalls the Chumby as a countertop device for accessing widgets, you’re thinking of the right company. It’s merely joining a growing pack of those looking expand its efforts beyond hardware to become a platform. In January it signed a similar integration deal with Marvell to get its widget platform onto digital picture frames. For more on bringing the web to televisions check out the full story on GigaOM.
DTV Delay Almost Official
The House voted today to approve a four-month delay to the transition from analog to digital television signals, making the new June 12 deadline a near certainty. The Senate approved its own version of the bill last week, and since both bills are in accord, the only thing left is to get the presidential signature. Since President Obama asked for this legislation in the first place, it should be a slam dunk. Learn more and what the stimulus package means for DTV coupons over at GigaOM.
Ditching NewTeeVee for an OldTeeVee Inauguration
My name is Stacey Higginbotham, and I watched Barack Obama become the 44th President of the United States on my television. And let me assure you, I wasn’t alone. Om also ditched the newteevee experience over quality concerns, and several of my friends chose the flat screen over Facebook as well. Over at GigaOM, we wrote about problems accessing certain sites online, as users complained that ABC.com, C-SPAN and even CNN.com all went down at one point or another.
When faced with the option of missing one of the “defining moments of a generation” or powering up the boob tube, I bet those with access to a TV gave up on the web. This is sad, because, like Liz, watching my friends comment on the speech via Facebook was one of the most social experiences I’ve ever had on the social network; it made watching such a powerful moment alone in my home far less lonely. But the inauguration served as a reminder that TV has the power to bring us together in ways that the latest Internet meme still cannot. If newteevee could become as reliable (and as accessible) as my CNN broadcast, while allowing me to share the experience through the eyes of my friends and not Anderson Cooper, I’d toss my cable box in no time.
Qualcomm Brings Mobile TV to 100 New Markets
After spectrum is freed up by the transition to digital television in mid-February, mobile TV based on Qualcomm’s MediaFLO technology will be available in 100 new markets, a dramatic expansion from the 63 available today. Sure, some of the markets are second-tier, but major ones getting coverage include San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Houston. Of course, coverage for more than 200 million people (up from 140 million!) doesn’t necessarily translate into subscribers. Qualcomm declines to give numbers, but with two carriers (AT&T and Verizon), a price tag of $15 per month and only six MediaFLO enabled handsets available, I tend to believe the comScore data, which shows that few people are watching broadcast mobile television.
Consumer Set-Top Boxes Are Just a Temporary Fix
Getting content from the web to your TV is driving the release of several new set-top boxes such as the Roku, Apple TV and ZeeVee. And yet one of the top chipmakers in the set-top box market doesn’t see those types of appliances winning out over the set-top boxes you get from video service providers (cable, telco, satellite, etc.) anytime soon.
There are currently too many different set-top box options out there sold directly to consumers through the retail channel, plus the service providers are not going to stand by and let their portal into a consumer’s home slip through their grasp, argues Christos Lagomichos, EVP and GM of NXP’s Home Business divsion. NXP makes semiconductors for a variety of devices, including TVs and set-top boxes.
He expects the coming year to be tough for the retail box makers, and expects any success to be temporary or confined to a few tech-savvy early adopters. There are other limits as well. “The way I see the opportunity here today is you have a lot of free content on the Internet, and a box like that could be a great web box, but delivering HD content to the TV over a PC will be a nightmare — there’s no good transport mechanism,” Lagomichos says.
He’s talking about the limits of getting HD content to a PC using current broadband. In order to stream HD, two things are needed: speeds of at least 6-8 Mbps and a bandwidth provider that won’t cap your service. Service providers can guarantee quality of service through the box over their connections and they won’t count their own services against the cap. This worldview is kind of surprising coming from a firm that benefits from having as many potential customers in the market as possible, but nonetheless does seem practical, especially given how poorly similar consumer web boxes have fared.
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