Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

15.6 MOBILE TV

For video-centric services, the media provider can elect to provide a fully blown Mobile TV experience. This is where a large part of the experience is intended to follow a programming concept similar to TV. The distinguishing factor of a Mobile TV experience over other types of mobile video services is usually the availability of an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to support a continuous diet of TV-like programmes, just like a TV services at home. The EPG is how a user can tell which programmes are available at what times and is interactive to allow channel switching.

For a decent Mobile TV experience, a client is ideally required on the handset that will support the EPG interaction in a convenient format and also the channel zapping. EPG and switching support is not usually a standard feature in any media player on a phone, which is why a separate client is usually required for TV, even if it uses the media player on the phone (which is a typical approach). Standards are evolving all the time and eventually we can expect media players to also act as TV clients.

As we said earlier, Mobile TV should not be thought of as simply ‘TV on the mobile’. What does this mean? Most importantly, simply making standard existing TV channels and TV content available on mobiles isn't the best recipe for success. Most obviously, mobiles are small and attention spans are limited. Mobile TV is often considered to be a ‘killing time’ service. For example, a user stuck in a bus queue ...