Nokia Tests TV on Cell Phones With French Operator

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 02/20/2005 | 03:51 PM ]

Nokia has demonstrated a long-anticipated feature to receive TV signals by a specially designed handset. If the technology becomes successful, it may pose a significant change for mobile entertainment market.

“Nokia Corp. is showing off the industry’s first live TV-to-mobile demonstration by using digital TV signals made available this week during the 3GSM World Congress by French broadcaster Telediffusion de France (TDF). The TV content, encoded in H.263, is encapsulated in IP data, and then broadcast using the MPEG-2 transport layer. TDF’s transmission tower in Vallauris, seven kilometers away from Cannes, has been sending the signals to the conference center,” says an article at CommsDesign.

Although the information sounds quite promising there are still things to fix.

“Nokia yesterday received an unexpected phone call from the French police, who complained of signal interference. While it remains unclear what exactly caused the so-called interference, the incidence prompted Nokia and TDF to reduce the transmission power from 1 kilowatt down to 1 watt,” said Tero Naumi, Nokia’s senior product manager.

• CommsDesign: Nokia Takes TV to Mobile with TDF signals.