TV or mobile TV? That is the question

A technology first for South Africa kicked off over the weekend with 1500-plus South Africans in Johannesburg, Soweto, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban watching the opening match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup on special edition mobile phones in a MultiChoice and M-Net DVB-H trial.

For the first time ever, alternative media is competing with traditional terrestrial television as the means to watch the World Cup. In Korea, where mobile broadcast technology has been available for a year, a Ssangyong poll indicated that 65.8% of respondents say new media (mobile television, Internet and personal mobile players) will be their primary method of enjoying the matches.

MultiChoice and M-Net began trialling this new mobile television technology, called DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld), in November 2005, and have the DVB-H rights to broadcast the World Cup's 64 matches to DVB-H-enabled mobile phones that have been placed with DStv subscriber trialists around South Africa. The trialists are subscribers of SA's three mobile operators - MTN, Vodacom and Cell C.

The trial bouquet also carries a selection of channels that are broadcast on MultiChoice's DStv Pay TV platform, as well as two M-Net made-for-mobile channels and two DMX audio channels.