LG Demos 'World's First' DMB Cell Phone

As you can see from recent news items in RF Report, manufacturers are scrambling to enable video on cell phones. LG Electronics announced it has demonstrated the "world's first terrestrial digital multimedia broadcast (DMB) receiving mobile phone."

Judging from a picture in the announcement, the phone appears to be slightly wider than a conventional cell phone but smaller than a PDA. According to the press release, "LG Electronics has technologically brought the usual home TV antenna function aimed at receiving VHF broadband DMB into the small phone. The handset also adopts DSP (Digital Signal Processor)-based SoC (System-on-Chip), mobile phone-fit low power consumption and design technologies for making the device small." The LG phone is based on the Korean DMB-T system, which while OFDM based, is not DVB-H.

"The terrestrial DMB phone, the first of its kind worldwide, adopts our own-developed handset design technologies and terrestrial broadcast-receiving chip, thus giving it competitive superiority in size, performance, and convenience in use," said Woo Palk, CTO of LG Electronics. "This terrestrial DMB phone has opened up a new world where people can watch terrestrial DMB TV and simultaneously speak via a mobile phone."

The telephone offers CDMA mobile phone service and includes a 2.4-inch QVGA screen and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Video is compressed using the H.264 standard at up to 30 fps. It also has the ability to record broadcasts, and includes a "TV-out" jack and a "dual stereo speaker."

For more information, see the LG electronics press release LG Electronics Unveils Word's First Terrestrial DMB Receiving Mobile Phone.