Following the EU announcement that they “officially favour” the use of the DVB-H standard for mobile television throughout all of Europe (in a similar vein to their decision that we should all use GSM for digital mobile phones many a moon ago), Virgin Mobile will be stopping the broadcast of Mobile TV through their Lobster handsets.
BT Movio, who were running the frequency used, have handed it back to main owners GCap, and that means no space for Virgin’s signal. But with only a handful of phones capable of receiving the signal, the trial has probably gathered enough information to make it worthwhile.
The way forward, as expected, is DVB-H, and expect the majority of high-end handsets to carry the required circuitry, even if stations are not yet being broadcast – and in the uK terrestrial analogue TV is still using the required frequency till the big digital switch over, expected withing 5-6 years.
I still think that grabbing the Freeview signal and getting the MP2 stream of the digital free to air channels is the best way forward, but that’s just me wanting regular television and not a sanitised bite sized ‘trendy’ clone decided by a marketing agency.
