DVB-H commercial start in Finland
Jippii, after several years of pilots and trials Finnish mobile TV is ready for prime time. I should highlight this post is about DVB-H based mobile TV. Video streaming through the “traditional” data connections has been available already earlier in Finland by several operators. DVB-H however is a completely new data bearer and requires a new antenna, receiver chip etc. on the device.
The actual DVB-H network operated by Digita (a subsidiary of French TDF group) has been available since December last year. Only last week there was a significant milestone when the first commercial receiving device came available (that’s Nokia N92) and both of the two national television broadcasters agreed to start programming on the network (MTV3 and Nelonen). The public broadcaster YLE is yet to start broadcasting due to some unclarified issues with the copyright compensations.
Finland is not the first country to start with DVB-H, the first ones were Italy and Vietnam (correct me if wrong). Finnish DVB-H network is not even nearly country-wide: it’s only available in couple of cities (Helsinki, Turku and Oulu) but Digita claims 25 percent of population has the chance to start watching. Sadly Tampere where I live is not covered yet but this should be corrected before end of this year.
I’ve followed closely all of the mobile TV technologies being created and it’s of course great to see DVB-H finally available. How succesful it becomes is of course a different question altogether. When compared to usual streaming video services it’s at least faster and more reliable, and should be cheaper to all parties involved.
If you have the chance to visit our S60 Evening at Helsinki, I’ll be around to show what’s on air from a Nokia N77.
-Jukka
You’re right in Italy DVB-H technology is avaialable and quite used to look at sport events in particular football matches. The coverage is quite extended, see coverage maps of H3G and TIM on my blogs:
http://nowireworld.blogspot.com/2006/06/dvb-h-coverage-map-by-tim.html
http://nowireworld.blogspot.com/2006/06/dvb-h-coverage-map-by-h3g.html
but I don’t know if user satisfaction is more due to the fact to manage cutting edge technology that to effective service quality.
I do not want to be misunderstood, video quality is good but looking a football match in such a small screen is not really worth to me.
Fabrizio, thanks for commenting from Italy!
I agree the screen is too small still, and as a former TV “professional” I’d like to see 25-30fps supported.
Any Vietnamese mobile TV watchers reading?
It would be great to see N77 and DVB-H in action… wish I could be there
Anyone remembers the 7710? (Wonder if that’s why it’s N77…) That device had a nice big screen.
Yeah, 7710 and 7700 before that
I was there actually turnign the knobs in the head-end servers when the first DVB-H pilots started in Helsinki. Of course 7700 was never sold and 7710 had the DVB-H antenna as a clumsy accessory.
Funny thing is, I actually saw a 7700 on display in a mobile store window in Vienna when I was there a couple years ago. I have a picture somewhere to prove it…
Oh yes I still have the DVB-H antenna accessory in a corner of my drawer!
And as shown in Helsinki S60 event, N77 is now shipping in Finland. I presume other markets where they have DVB-H will follow.