iPhone-friendly mobile digital telly tuner demo'd

iPhone-friendly mobile digital telly tuner demo'd
[13-02-2008]

Digital video playback software specialist PacketVideo this week introduced a matchbox-sized gadget capable of picking up DVB-H digital TV broadcasts and streaming them to any Wi-Fi enabled player - including the iPod Touch and iPhone.

DVB-H is a version of the DVB-T digital broadcast standard re-engineered to make it easier for mobile devices to pick up and decode. It's not widely available - it isn't available at all in the UK, at least not commercially - but now it's become the European standard for straight-to-phone telly transmissions, we're likely to be watching more of it very soon.

Nokia's sufficiently confident in the technology and consumers' demand for it, that it's going to incorporate DVB-H playback in the upcoming successor to the N95, the N96.

ipod iphone dvb-h receiver

Back to PacketVideo, which used the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona to show off the unstylishly named PacketVideo Mobile Broadcast Receiver.

PacketVideo's Mobile Broadcast Receiver: TV from DVB to Wi-Fi

The MBR tunes into DVB-H transmissions, decodes them and sends the back out over Wi-Fi in a form mobile devices can pick up via their built-in web browsers.

PacketVideo was keeping mum about the finer points of the product, but it did say the MBR is powered by a USB-rechargeable lithium ion battery.

Alas, it's pitching the product not at punters but at mobiler carriers and other service providers, who it wants to rebadge the MBR - giving it a snappier name in the process, hopefully - and sell it or give it away with DVB-H subscription packages.

Click here to read the PacketVideo mobile broadcast receiver press release.

Source: [The Register - Technology News via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News]

Posted under: IPHONE AROUND THE WORLD