The Mobile DTV Alliance—sponsored by Disney, Microsoft and Nokia—is expanding its scope to encompass the work of the Advanced Television System Committee on its mobile standard, ATSC M/H (mobile handheld).
The MDTVA also released “The North American Mobile TV Implementation Guidelines,” and said it was establishing itself “as a primary collaboration forum between companies of various industries interested in mobile TV deployments, implementations and global testing.”
The group’s guidelines enable interactive mobile TV and are based on the global Mobile Broadcast Services Enabler (OMA BCAST 1.0) specification, developed to address convergent TV opportunities across a wide variety of access systems, the group said.
“Looking to harmonize network technologies on the service layer, our new implementation guidelines cater to DVB-H based broadcast systems today and will include ATSC-MH based broadcast systems in the near future,” said MDTVA President Walt Tamminen, manager of standards and industry relations at Nokia. “And since the guidelines are based on a global mainstream standard created by the Open Mobile Alliance, they are already being tested on a global scale by a wide variety of implementers.”
ATSC President Mark Richer called the announcement “another indication that development of ATSC-M/H has strong industry support and is likely to be the ubiquitous standard for mobile and handheld DTV.”
With tests now underway, Richer has said the ATSC expects to have test results by May 15—and a candidate standard by year’s end, with an aim toward commercial mobile DTV deployment in early 2009.
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