Mobile TV – Get Over It

Ian Nock on March 30, 2011 — 4 Comments

I have written multiple times about Mobile TV through its death throws and there is news of yet another operator dropping the service.

In yet another blow to mobile TV using the DVB-H standard, Dutch operator KPN has decided to pull the plug out of its DVB-H Mobiel TV service from June, 1. KPN will use the freed up capacity for improvements to its Digitenne DTT platform.

via KPN terminates DVB-H mobile TV | Broadband TV News.

My previous posts have focused a lot on the why behind Mobile TV, as in when you are away from your home is the mainstream audience really interested in watching TV shows. My conclusion has been that no, there is no real interest in watching TV on the go for the mainstream audience. There is a minority audience who have the ability to focus on video for more than a few minutes, and those are commuters stuck on trains or buses. However even then, many of their journeys are broken up and not regular in start and end to work with scheduled transmissions. This kills mobile TV. Where there is an avenue of growth is through on-demand, but this is simply not available to many as the networks are too intermittent for this sort of service and mobile video that is popular is the download at home and take with you kind – iTunes in other words. Even then, it is still not mass market in the same way that audio playback is popular, because audio does not have to stop when you get off the train and is perfectly available to the drivers amongst us.

So the question I have to ask is – why are operators persisting in this? Why do they keep coming back even though the customers are not their? When will they Get Over It and concentrate on something that customers care about?

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  • Ron Stitt

    The failure of mobile TV to really catch on in a number of markets is perplexing and certainly “cause for pause”. However, I have seen a lot of research…qualitative, quantitative (log viewing data) and face-to-face (focus groups) that suggests there is in fact an audience for mobile long-form content…and the enthusiasm for an ability to extend the living room TV experience, which is still largely linear, out-of-home. We saw this very clearly in the large-scale OMVC mobile DTV showcase in DC last year….which I look at in the context a large body of prior research/trialing. The extent of the interest/market is debatable, but I think not really a question fundamentally. Beyond entertainment, there is no doubt demand for a whole class of live content…most obviously sports and breaking news, but also a class of content that I see sitting between the live and on-demand environments…content that can be viewed/enjoyed on-demand, but is really better experienced live (think American Idol, for example). The desire to enjoy common, live experiences is hard-wired into human DNA. Part of what will drive this “in-between class” of content is, I believe, the social graph. Integrating mobile TV with social networks is therefore going to be a driver…in a larger sense though, what is going to ultimately make it work is integration of point-multipoint (broadcast) delivery with point-to-point (carrier/IP) technology in a way that is totally transparent to the user…viewing content and not really knowing whether it’s live broadcast, live IP, on-demand (IP-delivered or locally stored on the device), with fully interactive overlay of the mobile internet. Fortunately, in America the ATSC M/H standard was developed in a way that contemplates and fully supports a path to this sort of product vision. Building a business model that gets us there is not a slam-dunk by any means but I believe it is achievable.

  • http://blackarrowconsulting.co.uk Ian D. Nock

    All the study and analysis of why it will work ignores the fact that outside of some limited success in Korea, almost all other deployments have failed to be adopted by consumers. Theory is all very well but I believe we have enough empirical evidence today to show that mobile TV is not wanted. Mobile video is another thing, as there is evidence that it is reaching consumer acceptance but interestingly consumed within the home and not when out of the household.

  • Ron Stitt

    So, you’re saying there won’t be demand for live sports and breaking news, at a minimum? When I refer to “research”, I’m talking about feedback from consumers who have been given actual devices and access to services for an extended period of time…and in the case of the OMVC Washington DC showcase, actual viewership as measured by Rentrak, and user feedback in the form of literally tens of thousands of comments posted in an online community run by Harris Interactive, and extended conversations with groups of actual users in multiple focus groups.

    In the U.S. (and in a lot of the global efforts as well), attempts at mobile TV so far have not been broadcaster-driven. Along with a very robust capability now with the new ATSC M/H standard, U.S. broadcasters bring a lot of new assets to the party, from existing infrastructure to content, as well as strong brands and enormous promotional power. We will see what happens… stars are aligning though for a real run at it, with networks and station groups committed to pretty large-scale deployments later this year (with free access emulating Korea). There is also very strong interest still from the CE sector, who have quite a lot invested now in the idea that this will work.

    I won’t dispute with you that there is a lot of countervailing experience around the world, not to mention MediaFLO here in the U.S. But I am suggesting that the actual product formulation is key, and given the extraordinarily complicated ecosystem of moving parts that has to be assembled to optimize that, we still have not answered this question as definitively as you suggest.

  • http://blackarrowconsulting.co.uk Ian D. Nock

    The proof will be in the pudding as we say in the UK – when someone, anyone, actually manages to launch and keep running a mobile service that receives sufficient revenue to make it a going concern and have organic growth. There is always someone who wants something, the key is making it more than a technical demonstration and make it a real product that has that organic growth. I have not seen any in Europe or the US that has actually done this. I look forward to being proved wrong as that would mean that business is actually being done, but I more than doubt it.