The
DVB-H test transmissions were received by both a Windows Mobile-based PDA and a cell phone, both equipped with add-on DVB-H receivers from
DiBcom, a fabless semiconductor house that specializes in chipsets for digital TV.
The media content was encoded using Microsoft's Windows Media Audio and Video 9. Microsoft says that
Windows Media Video 9 is its implementation of VC-1, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) draft standard, currently in trial publication as part of the final steps of standardization.
The user interface for the demo was provided by
Penthera's Athena-TV, described as a "virtual set top box" comprising robust, configurable head-end server components and a multi-platform client. According to Panthera, Athena-TV is specifically designed for the resource-limited environment of a mobile device and complies with the DVB-CBMS and Nokia OAI specifications for mobile broadcast. It supports a range of operating systems including the Windows family, Symbian/S60, and Linux, as well as multiple processing platforms including Intel's XScale and Pentium-M/Centrino.
Crown Castle Mobile Media provided the broadcast network infrastructure -- real-time content aggregation and encoding, satellite distribution, and terrestrial broadcast using the 1670 MHz band. Last spring, Crown Castle
announced its intention to build and operate a dedicated DVB-H network in the US.
"High quality mobile broadcasting such as demonstrated today presents a new and exciting opportunity to provide a true TV-like experience for the consumer, while creating a new revenue channel for content owners and aggregators," said Eric Schmidt, group product manager of Windows Digital Media at Microsoft. "By using Windows Media, mobile content providers can seamlessly provide the highest quality audio and video irrespective of bandwidth constraints."
Related stories:
