European Union commissioners have decided on a mobile TV broadcast standard and has now asked that its member governments ask their respective Cell phone carries to favor it.
The standard, DVB-H, or Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds, was chosen over rivals MediaFLO and DMB which were favored by South Korean and Chinese manufacturers. DVB-H is the most widely used standard in Europe currently.
Nokia,,Motorola, Philips, Sagem, Sony, Ericsson, Samsung,Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile all support DVB-H, but MediaFLO is supported by the largest carriers in the US, Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
“They can do that by labeling, they can do that by promoting it in attributing licenses and so on,” said EU spokesman Martin Selmayr.
Despite the choice, the impact is Limited. EU nations are under no obligation to choose a standard based on the decision of the commission.
Result for: video broadcasting
RIM has announced that BlackBerry phones will soon be video broadcasting machines thanks to new support from Qik.
The service will allow owners to broadcast live video from the phone’s camera directly to the Internet using a Wi-FI or 3G connection. The feature is currently available on jailbroken iPhones, Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones as well as Java 2 Micro Edition feature phones, but BlackBerry phones were notably missing it.
Initially the Qik service will only work on BlackBerry Bold, Pearl 8120, and Pearl 8130 smartphones. Curve and Flip support is coming soon.
“We are excited to bring our lifestyle technology to the millions of BlackBerry users worldwide,” added Ramu Sunkara, CEO of Qik. “In our quest to bring mobile live video sharing to the masses, we now support the broadest range of platforms, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Java-enabled mass-market phones.”
The public beta will be available in a few weeks and BlackBerry owners can get it at the Qik official site.
