US Mobile DTV standard finally approved
By Nilay Patel 
posted Oct 16th 2009 6:33PM
posted Oct 16th 2009 6:33PM
Well freaking finally. The Advanced Television System Committee just approved the Mobile DTV standard, meaning we're finally about to see for-real mobile television in the US. LG and Samsung have already made gear for the new standard, and the tech will be demoed later today before a rollout... sometime. Still, it's heartening news to hear that it's finally ready -- over 800 stations are signed up to broadcast the new signal, which makes use of existing 6MHz airwaves to do everything from straight TV to video-on-demand and targeted advertising. Cool, so now we're what, just a billion years behind DVB adoption?
why couldn't they simply use one standard across the continents, whether EU or USA or Asia etc why cant they sit and decide for a same standard universally!
because then they couldn't argue who's was better
Because there wouldn't be much money to be made that way. The same could be said for power as well. There's no point in using straight 240 in Europe, but when American travelers go overseas you would have to get a power converter and power plug adapters. Same with the citizens in those countries that travel to the US. They would need converters for the plugs, but they may even have to buy new devices to work with the US 110. With two standards for television, you would have your moble tuner that worked here in the US, but when you went to Asia, you'd have to buy a new one to use there and vice versa. If it was all standardized there would be less people making money all around.
Hey now maybe in the US we can get what Japan has had for YEARS. Damn near all of their phones have seg1 tuners. Hell they even have a tv tuner for the PSP. I'd love to be able to watch broadcast television on my phone. I stream videos over the net with my phone, but I'd like to have a tuner so it wouldn't be dependant on the data transfer.