Attending a few of the mobile-focused conferences at MipTV made me realise the huge gap that still exists between the two worlds of broadcast and telecoms.
In a session dedicated to mobile interactive TV, my charming compatriot from 3 Italy dedicated his presentation to the operator's imminent broadcast of the World Cup over DVB-H. Interesting news, but absolutely nothing to do with interactivity.
In fact, much of the talk predictably looked at mobile as a smaller, portable TV: shorter edits, different peak times and preference for specific genres. That's with the notable exception of NRK's experiments in Norway, 3's "C me TV" and Buongiorno's "Soccer Addicts" - who used the mobile phone as a communication device and a content-generation tool.
It works both ways though. I don't know if it's just me, but the mobile TV noise at 3GSM and in its aftermath didn't quite register with me. Look at it from MipTV's broadcast perspective, and mobile TV is a revolution. The cinics in the mobile industry will point at other overhyped failures and it is in any case true that the handsets - 3G and DVB-H - will take some time before reaching critical mass for broadcasters. The results of all the trials so far are however very encouraging and mobile TV over 3G is already with us, growing steadily thanks to the operators' marketing mussle.
A closing thought: mobile TV currently lives between SMS voting and streaming over 3G. I'd expect it to develop as a mix of the two, with video content enhanced through user participation.
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