The often-corrupt market research buzz around mobile video foresees astonishing numbers of mobile phone users tuning in to handheld TV by the end of the decade. (Although as John du Pre Gauntt points out in eMarketer, the disagreements among the number-crunchers reach tens of billions of dollars.)
Forecasters count manufacturers and investment deals and ad spends, but market researchers are sometimes obtuse about the texture of the tech they tout -- they misjudge user delight, user frustration, user acceptance, and our ever rising media expectations..
Pictured at top left is my T-Mobile Pocket PC phone running the Slingbox Mobile Player that I connect over WiFi at my local Starbucks. The excellent and very user-friendly Slingbox links my DirectTV satellite tuner in New York to the Pocket PC or any laptop or desktop computer on the broadband Internet. I can browse all 200+ channels of television from my phone or PC as long as I'm near wired or wireless Ethernet.
An even more mobile handheld TV product is the over-the-air Modeo service based on DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) that gets a lot of telecom industry hype. (Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOM reported yesterday that Modeo is launching a beta test in New York this week. I got a demo of Modeo some weeks back from Sam Leinhardt, co-founder of Penthera Technologies, Modeo's systems provider. Sam showed me the custom-made Modeo phone plus an SD-format plug-in card that receives Modeo DVB-H service on standard high-end phones, Pocket PCs and laptops. (Click on the inset at right to enlarge.)
The Modeo offering provides five or six regular cable services like FOX News (details in flux) to your phone anywhere in your mobile coverage area. But mobile TV with either the Modeo or my much more capacious Slingbox-connected Pocket PC phone misses the mark for five reasons:
- It's old fashioned appointment TV. Unlike a DVR, DVD, iPod or YouTube, I can only watch what's on the air at the time I tune in.
- It doesn't travel well. I can't watch a 30 minute sitcom let alone a two-hour movie while I'm on line at the ATM or waiting for a bus. And I can't pause, bookmark or email the live video stream.
- It doesn't fit on a phone. I can either take calls and ignore the TV, or watch the TV and ignore the calls. Even an MP3-playing phone stops the music when I answer a call.
- It needs a broadband radio signal. It'll work in a Starbucks or on a bus but not in a tunnel or on the subway.
- I don't get enough battery life out of today's hot multipurpose phones between talking, texting, taking pictures, playing color games and playing tunes. Adding even a half hour of video could wipe me out, powerwise.
By contrast, these days I want ...
- to watch what I want when I want it, and
- I prefer three or six minute videos in general,
- that I can pause, post or email to my friends,
- and that can play anywhere
- without cutting me off from the world with a dead battery.
I can imagine watching an important ball game or news coverage on my Slingbox PPC. I can see a Modeo player in the car on long trips -- even on an hour-long commute. But other approaches to mobile video that rely on short form programs, downloaded content, and custom-made, tightly-targeted branded entertainment seem more likely to attract the big audiences that researchers predict. Merely replicating a 20th Century media model with a 21st Century technology seems like a waste of time.
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