TV on cellphones

It's rapidly becoming apparent that TV reception is set to be a staple cellphone feature. In May, Samsung released a CDMA2000 1x handset with a built-in TV tuner, and NEC has today announced Japan's answer, a W-CDMA handset containing a tuner that will pick up terrestrial digital TV. The snag (aside from the fact that the battery life of NEC's handset takes us right back to the touch-it-and-it-dies stages of FOMA's infancy) is that while digital terrestrial broadcasting for proper TVs gets a limited launch in Japan from December this year, the various companies who plan to be involved in broadcasting to mobile devices are still wrangling over compression formats and what have you, and there is no launch date yet in sight, according to the government (via a ZDNet Japan article).

There is already at least one "TV-like" service in Japan using DoCoMo's M-stage V Live system to stream news, weather, and entertainment programs, but the major problem is that watching the content incurs packet fees, which are prohibitively high. It may well be that building in a TV receiver is the way to go if one feels an overpowering need to watch the box on the move.

It does occur to me that we are spending an ever-greater amount of time squinting at ever-smaller screens...

Refs: K-Tai Watch article on Aquacast streaming service
K-Tai Watch on the Samsung TV handset
ZDNet on NEC's digital TV handset