DVB-H making some waves

From /. via News.com, Philips is saying that it will ship chips sets to allow TV reception on cell phones (and maybe other devices.) From the News.com article:

"The company will show off the technology at the Computer Electronics Show kicking off on Jan. 5 in Las Vegas.

The company announced a similar chipset--which consists of a TV tuner, a decoder and peripheral components--for the European market earlier in the year. Three out of the six largest handset makers are currently building phones containing the chip for trials that will likely start soon. The U.S. chipset is essentially the same product."

To "ensure" that the content and service will be availible, Philips has partnered with Crown Castle who, back in 2003, acquired the rights to 5 megahertz of the L band specturm(see below). Crown Castle has said it would be luanching the multicast TV network in 2006.

From MocoNews, here is a quote from an interview with Michael Scheppert, President of Crown Castle Mobile Media:

"Really, the biggest challenge for us is figuring out exactly the right content to carry. Some people think that it’s all about news. Some people think that it’s all about sports. Some people think that it’s all about cartoons.

Some people think that you’ve got to have existing channels that people already know and love, and may know the schedule. Just take that existing channel and put it on the mobile broadcasting platform. Other people think, no, no, you’ve got to have a whole new channel that has content formatted [for mobile], and shorter form factors and shorter programming and less advertising.

Some people think it’s all about live content, some people think it’s all about cache content that’s played out on demand."

More from the article (which is a fantastic read) about the L band spectrum:

How did Crown Castle have the foresight to bid for 5MHz of U.S. L-band spectrum?
We were the only ones who even participated in that auction. I think others weren't interested, because it was a block of unpaired spectrum. All the cellular technologies-whether GSM or CDMA-need a paired spectrum, where you have some block of spectrum for up-link and a block of spectrum for down-link. I think because of our experience in broadcasting, we were able to see an opportunity there in the spectrum that perhaps other people overlooked.