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| Elgato eyeTVmobile |
WASHINGTON—As mobile DTV rolls
out in about 50 markets during the next few
months, the service will rely more heavily than
originally envisioned on peripheral “dongles,”
initially priced at more than $100 each, that
enable smartphones and tablets to receive
signals. During this fall’s soft-launch phase, MDTV providers are still making fundamental
business-model decisions about future deployment.
Altogether about 90 U.S. stations are now
transmitting MDTV signals, according to a
Harris Corp. tally. Dyle TV signals now reach
about 55 percent of the U.S. population.
The long-awaited debut of commercial Dyle
TV and MyDTV will include several innovative
approaches, such as a shared-channel service
in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, where commercial
and public TV stations will be available via the
same transmission. Dyle TV is the service of the
Mobile Content Venture (MCV), spearheaded by
NBC and Fox plus a dozen other group station
owners; “MyDTV” is the branding for the service
of the Mobile 500 Alliance, also a consortium
of multiple station groups. In only a few
cities, such as Las Vegas, Minneapolis/St. Paul; and
Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., are signals from both
MCV and Mobile 500 stations now available.
More details about upcoming MDTV
plans may be revealed at a Sept. 2
promotional event at the Rayburn House
Office Building on Capitol Hill organized
by the Open Mobile Video Coalition.
“Right now it’s all about receivers,” said
Jay Adrick, vice president, broadcast technology
at the Harris Broadcast Communications
Division. “We’ve got to get more
receivers out there.”
Harris has supplied transmitter and
related equipment to “the vast majority”
(about 70 percent) of the TV stations transmitting
mDTV signals, he said. The equipment
costs about $75,000 to $125,000 per
station, “depending on whether you’ve got
an upgradeable exciter,” Adrick added.
Two companies are making the initial
dongles: Elgato, a German-American firm
specializing in video and TV peripherals
for Apple products, and Belkin International,
a Los Angeles-based maker of consumer
electronics devices, will begin selling their
versions of dongles during the coming
month. Both companies—as well as MCV,
M500 and MetroPCS officials—declined to
speculate on the number of receivers that
will be in the market this year.
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| Salil Dalvi, co-general manager of Dyle Mobile TV and senior vice president for Mobile Platform Development, NBCUniversal |
MetroPCS, the nation’s fifth largest wireless
telephone provider, has begun selling
the Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G handset
with a preloaded Dyle TV app in 12 markets
where TV stations are now transmitting Dyle-branded signals. The Samsung phone,
with its built-in Dyle receiver and a telescoping
antenna, costs $459 and is being
promoted as an “Android smartphone
[that] brings live TV to the palm of your
hand.”
iOS AND ANDROID VERSIONS
Elgato displayed a DVB version of its
“eyeTVmobile” dongle for Apple’s iOS
platform at the IFA consumer electronics
show in Berlin earlier this month. Adam
Steinberg, the company’s marketing vice
president, told TV Technology that Elgato
is developing an Android version with Micro
USB connector.
Steinberg was also cautious about
launching the service in the crowded pre-holiday
season. “I would have loved to happen
earlier in the year …[but] we may be
surprised.”
Belkin’s single MDTV receiver is called
“Dyle Mobile TV” and will be aimed at iOS
devices including iPhone, iPad and iPad
Touch, according to a Belkin spokesperson.
She acknowledged that “pricing and distribution
are still being worked out since it
is a slightly different kind of product,” and,
like Elgato, Belkin expects most of the sales
to be handled online, not through local
electronics retailers.
Both dongle makers expect broadcasters’
on-air promotions of the Dyle service
to be the major drive to encourage viewers
to order products. The dongle implementations—each
less than two-inches square with built-in
power and antenna—will require viewers
to download free apps into their wireless
devices that will be used to tune into local
TV stations transmitting the Dyle and
MyDTV services.
Fisher Broadcasting and Hubbard Broadcasting,
leaders of the Mobile 500, will soft
launch MyDTV on Oct. 1 at their flagship
stations in Seattle and Minneapolis/St. Paul
respectively, according to John Lawson, executive
director of the Mobile 500 Alliance.
The companies are ordering 1,500 Elgato
MyDTV dongles, most of which will be distributed
for free, he said.
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| Belkin Dyle Mobile TV |
“The pace of deployment will pick up,
but for now there’s a real focus on the Seattle
and Twin Cities experience,” Lawson said.
Salil Dalvi, co-general manager of Dyle
Mobile TV and senior vice president for
Mobile Platform Development at NBCUniversal,
agrees that many MDTV decisions
will be made quickly. Dalvi told TV Technology
that the Mobile Content Venture
will offer the application and access to
shows free “through the end of 2012.”
“We’ll take a look at the end of 2012 to
see if we continue free of charge,” Dalvi
said. Customers who buy dongles or smartphones
will be advised that the service
price may change in the future.
SIMULCASTING, ADVERTISING
AND MORE STRATEGIES
Most of the current MDTV programming
consists of simulcasts of standard
broadcast line-ups. In many markets, the
group owners have received approval
from ABC and CBS to transmit those networks’
shows via Dyle TV and MyDTV, although
those networks are not participating
in the initiative.
For now most stations are concentrating
on their primary TV broadcast line-up.
One initial exception is in the Twin Cities,
where Hubbard’s KSTP is a simulcast
of the station’s feed of ABC network plus
a simulcast of KTCA, Twin Cities Public TV.
“This is a where the public-private partnership
that we’ve created is paying off,”
said Lawson, a former public TV executive.
In markets such as Minneapolis/St. Paul,
Atlanta and Washington, D.C., where ABC
and/or CBS have authorized their affiliates
to transmit network programming via MDTV on a trial basis, the networks “want
to examine the response in order to formulate
their own strategies,” Lawson said.
He expects the networks and others “to develop
their own mobile plans based on the
Mobile 500 and Dyle experiences.”
Among the chief objectives of this fall’s
pilot services is an evaluation of advertising
opportunities. Dalvi points out that since “all use is
measured,” local stations will be able to
show mobile usage data to potential advertisers.
“We want to make sure that this is integrated
as cleanly as possible into how a TV
station is selling to advertisers,” Dalvi said.
Although he declines to identify “who will
provide the interface for measurement,”
Lawson at Mobile 500 acknowledges that, “We
have developed a research framework
with Rentrak and Nielsen.”
“We want to not only measure the consumer
reaction but also deploy the advertising
components which are the heart
of our revenue model,” Lawson said. “We
think we can get a higher CPM for mobile
because of its unique characteristics, especially
the total accountability of viewership.”
Adrick of Harris said he believed the MDTV
rollout would resemble the digital TV expansion
of the last decade—but faster. He said out that new products “can handle
encryption on the fly,” and Harris is working
with Roundbox and other companies
that will enable signaling, announcement
and applications to accelerate MDTV capabilities.
“We’ve been through the early adopter
phase like DTV and hi-def,” Adrick said.
“We’re at the phase where we have to get
receivers into the marketplace, and when
they are there, we’ll have more interest and
more stations will dive in.”