KEY POINTS:
All these gadgets we take for granted - the internet, computers, mobile phones and portable media devices that connect us to each other and the world. Sometimes you just have to take a breather to marvel at technology. I had one of those moments recently. It was during
last Friday's U2 concert at Mt Smart Stadium and Bono was promising to "light this place up like a Christmas tree" in a bid to make poverty history.
I turned away from the stage and saw the amazing sight of 30,000 mobile phone screens lighting up the darkened bowl behind me, a milky way of wavering pin pricks of lights. It brought home to me just how interconnected we have become, each of us tied wielding our own little portal to the world.
I had another one of those moments this week. I was standing in a state-of-the-art TV studio in San Diego, a bank of screens displaying the TV feeds from the main US networks.
The interesting thing about this TV studio was that it was solely devoted to television services that are received by mobile phones. Or it will be when its owner, MediaFLO, starts broadcasting next year, initially beaming out up to 20 live TV channels to Verizon mobile phone subscribers - everything from baseball games and rock concerts to 24-hour news services and reality TV shows. It's all part of the new wave of services known as digital multimedia broadcasting.
A subsidiary of mobile chip maker Qualcomm, MediaFLO is taking a large punt that millions of Americans will, in the next few years, want to watch TV on their mobile phones. Even the people manning the studio and its network of transmitters spread across the US aren't sure at this stage what type of mobile TV services will take off. The only certainty is that what is delivered will be better than we get at the moment.
Instead of sending out video across the mobile phone network, which generally results in a stuttering, low-quality feed for the mobile-wielding viewer, MediaFLO is using a broadcast technology more akin to what you'd find inside your TV set. A new range of mobile phone chips made by Qualcomm have TV receivers built into them which are designed to receive digital TV signals. Qualcomm has purchased the US national rights to UHF channel 55 and is effectively transforming itself into a media player. With the new mobile phones that will go on sale next year, users who have subscribed will get a live feed to their mobile at the same time the broadcast appears on TV - not delayed or edited down into bite-size chunks as most video streaming services currently are.
Most of the content will be provided by the existing media networks, repackaged to suit mobile phone screens. It's a promising new opportunity for pay TV operators who want to squeeze extra subscription services out of the content they currently send over satellite or cable networks to people's homes.
Played on the new generation of TV phones, mobile TV looks very good. Considering America's huge appetite for media and the large numbers of people spending time on buses and trains getting to and from work each day, I can see people tuning in on their mobiles to watch TV.
But what about New Zealand? Mobile video services have had a lacklustre start here and we don't have the commuting culture of the US. MediaFlo says it is talking to New Zealand and Australian operators and with a trial of the mobile TV services under way with Rupert Murdoch-owned BSkyB in Britain, Sky TV is a logical partner here.
Still, the technology will find its niche here, maybe a mass market in the bigger countries. It has one major thing going for it - it takes advantage of a delivery method we've started to take for granted - those communications devices each of us carry around, our own little portals to the world.
