With all the hype about the World Cup being so important for developing mobile television, how well did it actually do? Although many participants are still keeping mum, EE Times was able to interview three executives — the chairman, CEO and CTO — from the French multimedia chipset vendor DiBcom.
The executives visited Italy and used LG U900 and Samsung P910 handsets to receive DVB-H broadcasts. The LG uses Microtune’s tuner and Samsung uses a Freescale tuner. Both use a DiBcom demodulation chip.
The handsets could receive eight channels broadcast by 3 Italia that has constructed its own DVB-H network.
Italian coverage
The DiBcom executives said DVB-H coverage around Rome was good but a faulty transmitter in the city resulted in no coverage in about 20 percent of the city.
About 15 seconds were required to initialize the handset and six seconds to change channels, according to the executives.
However, EE Times says a consultant hired by Microtune reported handset initialization of about 20 seconds and 40 seconds when receiving a “no service” notice.
Good quality
The DiBcom execs says the mobile TV picture and resolution was good. “You can see the ball in a football stadium with half the stadium displayed on the screen,” the executives reported to EE Times.
Battery life wasn’t too bad. The DiBcom executives say they could watch mobile TV for three hours at a time.
However, battery life is a function in large part of the amount of time the handset receives data.
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