As a fully paid up member of the ultra gadget club, the idea of having TV on my smartphone is tremendously exciting. A year or two ago I heard about trials of DVB-H receivers bolted onto the back of the Nokia 7710 and I searched high and low for the right aerial kit to convert my own 7710. To no avail, by the way, and in any case I'd have had to travel to Oxford (where the trials were taking place) just to pick up a signal!
So I watched Nokia's unveiling of their TV-optimised N77 on Monday morning and was interested, to say the least. Maybe the pieces of the digital mobile TV jigsaw really were falling into place? And, when it's all working in a coverage area, there's no doubt that the results are impressive and quite watchable. With a set of stereo headphones on, the mobile TV experience is immersive and you could almost be back at home watching in your living room.
And therein lies the main problem. When listening to music on the move, using your smartphone or an iPod or similar, your ears are tied up but your eyes and limbs are free to watch your surroundings and to hang onto tube straps, bus rails, shopping bags, etc. You'll see where you're going, you won't walk into lampposts or down manhole covers or get run down in the road. And (hopefully) you'll spot potential muggers before they get anywhere near you. The music is immersive, but it doesn't take over your whole consciousness.
- o -
Not so with mobile TV. You'll need your ears, of course, you'll need your eyes and almost certainly also one of your hands, to hold the mobile in the right viewing position. When watching, you'll be very restricted in what else you can do, you'll be distracted and semi-oblivious to your surroundings. The Nokia N77 promo clip shows a football fan almost getting run over by a bus as he strolls down the road watching the 'big match'. The Nokia PR clips of the same device show a guy, sitting on a bench, watching the er.... first promo clip on his N77, eyes glued to the screen and with high quality (noise-cancelling?) headphones over his ears. High-tech mugger heaven. Sit like this in any major city and you're going to get bopped over the head and robbed, being a very easy, unsuspecting target. Even if you don't actually get mugged, you're not really going to be able to settle into the TV programme as you'll be feeling very vulnerable.
But surely you can relax in some potential viewing places with your mobile TV smartphone? Well, yes, there's a train carriage (moving at 80mph, where you almost certainly won't be able to get a consistent signal), an airplane seat (where you'll get no signal at all), a bus seat (on which you'll be thrown around and the last thing you'll want to do is focus on a small screen held in front of you), your hotel room (which already has a very nice TV with more channels) or your living room (which has.... well, everything). So where on earth are customers going to watch?
Your kids? Oh yes, it'll be useful for keeping the kids happy in the back of the car. Really? At the mercy of constantly changing reception quality and whatever standard channels happen to be on? Far better to rip a few of your DVDs to MP4 and let them watch this, with higher quality, pausability and consistency. The same applies for video content to watch when on the plane or train yourself, because you're moving and out of consistent reception, you'll find it much more pleasant to watch one of your own MP4 movies.
I'm afraid that I think TV on a phone is technology for technology's sake. It's cool, it's clever, it's fun, but as much use in the real world as fending off your N77-stealing mugger with your 3GSM show pass...
Steve Litchfield, 14 Feb 2007