At the Women`s World Cup of Golf a couple of weeks ago, Vodafone Live displayed exactly what was possible with mobile TV. Highlights of the day were packaged into a neat bundle of clips and streamed to 3G-supported Vodafone Live cellphones.
Anyone subscribing to the service, who happened to be interested in women`s golf (two requirements that probably narrowed down the market size somewhat), was able to see the action in almost any imaginable environment.
Literally, anywhere: waiting for a taxi, sitting in a coffee shop, standing in line at the bank. Even at a carwash, Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys once suggested.
This week ITWeb reported on the trials held in Gauteng by MultiChoice, which aims to bring a selection of its DSTV channels to the cellphone, in partnership with Nokia. This isn`t 3G, it`s something better, it claims, known as DVB-H.
But will mobile television really work? There`s no doubt that the infrastructure is there. Vodacom subscribers can, from what I understand, look forward to plenty more channels being added to their currently slightly limited mobile bouquet.
Can`t people wait anymore?
The problem is, when you actually sit down and think about it, how many of these myriad situations will inspire you to actually fire up 3G and watch a quick soapie? How badly do we need TV anyway? Can we no longer wait until we get home at 6pm?
TV over the Internet looks to me to be visually far more appealing, more customisable, and something far more worthy of looking forward to.
Dave Glazier, junior journalist
The video quality is good. Less can be said about the audio. But that`s not really the biggest problem. A cellphone screen is a little small to watch anything on. It hurts your eyes to look at one for too long. It seems very unnatural - these things were originally meant to be put to our ears.
On PDAs, or something with a slightly bigger screen, the mobi-TV craze might become just that. But many of the 3G-supported phones people own are simply a recipe for the above-mentioned eyestrain.
Is it a fad, or are Vodacom and MultiChoice really about to bring in a new era of South African television viewing? I`d go for fad. The subscriber base of people who have access to 3G is a little low; I can`t see too many advertisers jumping at the opportunity to relay their message to such a select group.
But I suppose we will have to wait and see. Television, in my humble opinion, will advance in other areas, and these are not necessarily mobile.
TV viewing is a social thing; it`s something the family does today in a similar way to how it would huddle around the transistor radio in bygone days. Television on the mobile can only be watched by one person, no matter how close your relationship to any potential co-viewer might be.
Far more appealing
Anyone suitably economically advantaged to get cellular TV will most likely own a computer equipped with broadband access. TV over the Internet looks to me to be visually far more appealing, more customisable, and something far more worthy of looking forward to.
But that`s not to say there will be absolutely no use for mobile video technologies. I can envisage people waiting outside the movie theatre choosing movies by previewing film clips on their phones, for instance.
Short newsflash broadcasts might also have a home on the tiny screen, but in terms of ordinary 'sofa, coffee and blanket` style viewing, I can`t see mobile really replacing a fixed-position screen, of some sort.
But predicting technological trends is a tricky business, especially it seems when it comes to cellphones. Nobody expected the ringtone phenomenon to pervade our lives like it has. So who knows?
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