TV on mobile phones from today

Watching TV on mobile phones became a reality from Wednesday.

The new era in television started with the Doordarshan services becoming available on phone sets based on a new technology called Digital Video Broadcast-Hand held (DVB-H).

To begin, only Delhiites will be able to enjoy the TV on mobile, but soon the service will be extended to other parts of the country, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi said inaugurating the service.

As many as eight DD channels will now be available.

Signals will be available within 12 km of the Akashwani Bhawan which is situated on the Parliament Street in New Delhi. It will be free-to-air service.

At present DD can be seen only on phone sets of Nokia as that is the only company whose DVB-H enabled sets are available in the country, but soon other companies like Samsung and Motorola too will be introducing their sets.

''It is a great moment for Doordarshan heralding a revolution in broadcast,'' Dasmunsi said.

The service has been started as a pilot project in the capital.

The DD channels that will be available on mobile include DD National, DD News, DD Sports, DD Urdu, DD Bengali, DD Podhiji and DD Bharati.

The trial runs of the new experiment in broadcasting were started about a year back.

The system that will run on the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld) technology gives a very high quality of pictures.

It is the best mobile broadcast delivery system currently available, and works as per an approved standard adopted since November 2004 for handheld equipment by ETSI (European Telecommunications Institute).

DD officials said the main challenge before DD was reformating the content for mobile TV. There are countries like Italy and Germany which are making films only for mobile TV. The content for such services has to be specific and smart and DD would try to do that.