Thomson and Irdeto are working together on a trial of a five-channel mobile TV service in the greater Sydney, Australia, area that relies on MPEG-4 AVC encoding and DVB-H transmission.
The service can be received on any DVB-H-capable mobile device equipped with decoding technology from Irdeto.
The trial is the next phase in Australia’s evaluation of mobile TV and is intended to provide information needed to make an informed decision about the best solution for the eventual rollout of a commercial mobile TV service, according to Martin Farrimond, Broadcast Australia’s general manager for mobile television.
Initially, CNN, children’s service Boomerang and three national channels, ABC, ABC2 and SBS, will comprise the mobile channel offering. Others may be added later. They are encoded using the Thomson mobile TV encoder, developed specifically for mobile TV applications. The statistical encoding capabilities of the encoder are used with Opal statistical time slicing to ensure that the best use is made of the available bandwidth while preserving video quality.
The other critical part of the trial system is the Thomson SmartVision mobile TV service platform. In addition to managing subscribers, services and system configuration, it also generates a live electronic service guide (ESG) automatically.
See Thomson at IBC2007 in Stands IP341, M265, 1.411, 7.719, OE200 and OE220, or visit www.thomson.net.
