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Mobile TV is gaining a lot of media and consumer attention. The launch of services in time for this past summer's World Cup matches brought the technology front and center and caught the attention of many semiconductor design houses, marketing professionals, and industry analysts as a hot market. The challenge is that broadband services are not cellular services with bigger channels. Tuning in video is not the same as receiving voice signals. There are unique technical considerations when adding TV to a mobile handset, and, without careful design, the mobile TV product is likely to fail in real-world environments.

Unfortunately, there are no universal global standards and only basic performance specifications. While laboratory validation is a necessary first step, it takes real-world broadband TV experience and a clear understanding of the inner workings of a mobile handset to make mobile TV work well. The danger to such a new market is that the quality of every mobile TV product has a direct impact on early adopters' experiences. Poor-quality first-generation products could seriously damage the prospects of such a promising market.

In-Stat projects that by the end of 2010, mobile TV broadcast subscribers worldwide will reach 102 million, up from 3.4 million in 2006. The reality is that mobile TV is still developing, and those working in it are daily gaining understanding on the market, business models and technical dynamics. For instance, Microtune's mobile TV tuners were used in the historic commercial launch of services by 3 Italia in the summer of 2006. Within the first six weeks, 3 Italia attracted more than 110,000 subscribers and was well on the way to its target of 500,000 subscribers by the end of the year.[1] Mobile TV services have also launched in Korea and Japan and more than forty field trails are being conducted worldwide. These implementations are yielding powerful data about tuner quality, interference, power management needs, and performance metrics.

Lack of Industry Certification Risks Quality
Until it is deployed in a real mobile environment, it is difficult to tell if a device or handset will measure up. Laboratory testing is not an alternative to real-world experience and field-proven designs, and this is especially true in the mobile market with its challenging, often hostile, reception environments.

For most mobility standards, the risks of poor performance are mitigated by having some established body of authority that ensures products meet specifications. For instance, with GSM there is a process called "Final Type Approval." This certification process was particularly important in early implementations, and it remains a crucial step for manufacturers who are new to designing for GSM.

In the early days of the GSM standard, all new handsets were sent to recognized test houses to make sure that they complied. Then, they were certified. As the industry matured, this process was no longer necessary for those with appropriate experience, so these manufacturers developed their own in-house test and certification processes.

Currently, the dominant global standard for mobile TV is Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H), and there is no analogous certification process in place. In fact, there are no requirements that handsets be tested in any kind of standard way. As a result, each company will likely interpret the standard in its own way, and the result will be different levels of performance based on a specific interpretation of the specification. In the end, all handsets may "pass," but it is highly unlikely that they will all work the same. The lack of a verification process within the industry is a risk to interoperability, perceived service quality, and, ultimately, to market success.

Service and picture quality are the main things that early adopters will notice and comment on to their peers. If mobile TV devices are not rigorously tested or the environment in which they will need to operate is not fully understood, handsets will fail when the user is watching TV.

In a mobile TV market without an industry certification process, subscribers will have different experiences based on their service provider and handset type. For instance, one consumer might receive a very poor picture in a doctor's waiting room, while the person sitting in the next seat receives ones that is perfectly clear. Until there is a benchmark for comparing handsets, there will be different levels of performance.

Ensuring Quality in Mobile TV
In the absence of a benchmark, handset designers need to think carefully about the devices they choose for their handset. For mobile TV, the make-or-break device is the tuner. The secret is to choose a device that has the best performance across all of the criteria laid out in the DVB-H and MBRAI specifications, not just focus on one particular specification. GSM handset designers, for instance, are well trained on the importance of sensitivity in the handset, or the ability of the mobile to detect a very small signal. But handset designers need to think differently for broadband TV applications. If they are looking only at sensitivity, they are missing half of the picture. Selectivity, or the ability to distinguish the desired signal from the rest, is more important.

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