Comments on: Radio Ga Ga

By: Please, Make The Mobile TV Hype Stop at MobHappy

Please, Make The Mobile TV Hype Stop at MobHappy — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:44:41 +0000

[...] The results of two mobile TV trials in the UK have been released, with plenty of stories painting the service as The! Next! Big! Thing! But both of these trials raise as many questions as they answer. Russell mentioned yesterday how the results of the first trial showed people were more interested in — and spent more time — listening to the radio than watching TV on their handsets, but the spin is clearly turned on over at BT Movio, talking about “consumer thirst” for mobile TV. [...]

By: Rudy De Waele

Rudy De Waele — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:04:20 +0000

Just leaving out the DAB now, I have some friends using FM on their mobile and they all just love it! Like having radio everywhere with you as we used to with transistors when we were kids – well at least I did.

I’m subscribed to my favorite radio program, a weekly 2 hour audio feed to download to my mobile. The show is downloadable in 2 parts of each 1 hour (approx. 40 Mb per file at a fair 96 kbps mp3 encoding). Downloading over 3G takes 10-15 minutes for 1 hour of music and you have to inlcude the cost of the data transfer of course, which is not cheap enough to go mainstream yet. You can do it on your PC from the internet then bluetooth or USB to your mobile too of course. I’m happy with my radio program since I can listen to the best tunes that came out during the week and I can listen to them over and over again. With a memory stick on your phone and an audio feed subscription, the feed updates itself automatically and it works fine.

It’s one of my favorite mobile apps use besides voice, text and mobile browsing.

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:06:25 +0000

Thanks for the update, Ian – let us know when you have reviewed it.

I’m aware that it was DAB, but I’m not convinced that pictures necessarily enhance radio that much. I just think that sound and mobile make a much more appropriate service than video and mobile.

Just my opinion and we’ll see what the market decides.

Cheers

Russell

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:54:16 +0000

Russell this trial was using DAB as the radio and the key factor for most in trail was not the audio but the fact that the BBC has managed to get get pictures on the radio.

Last week I heard the BT Spokeperson do a couple of spots on National Radio explaining the service and the fact that it was most used on the commute to work as something that allowed catch up TV. One of the people went on to describe it as TiVo on your phone. Now whilst I think that this is an interesting development for DAB, the only reason that DAB was used was the issue of regulation. If we want narrow cast TV rather than video download then what is needed is spectrum. At present no spectrum is available for DVB-H and so as a workround BT has decided to utilise the available spectrum. The spokeperson went on to say that once spectrum was available the service could/would move over from DAB.

Have made a few calls and hope to have a test handset and access in the next few weeks. I will post a review on my blog when I have used it.