Every now and then there is a note in the press about the success of mobile TV in Asian countries such as Japan and Korea in combination with bewilderment of how it could have taken off there while it wasn't a success at all elsewhere.
In retrospect I can confirm this. When I was in Korea recently, I noticed that all phones of Samsung I know from Europe as well look very much the same, BUT, they have a retractable antenna for television reception at the top. One doesn't see it at first as it's nicely integrated in the design but it is there. And I think the big difference to the approach tried in Europe, for example, is that TV reception on the mobile phone seems to be free. No extra monthly charge, who could say no?
I am not sure if they receive the normal TV program on their mobile or if it is special content, however. From a technical point of view I wonder if there's a separate chip for TV reception or if that is integrated somehow in one of the other chips? And I wonder what the motivation is for manufacturers to put this into the Korean version of their devices? If it's not revenue generating it must be quite popular as otherwise I am sure the companies wouldn't go the extra mile and extra expense to include it. As usual one question answered, several new ones being raised 🙂
Japan uses IDSB-T http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISDB and is branded 1seg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1seg whereas Korea uses the DMB standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Multimedia_Broadcasting. USA had a tilt at it too with Qualcomm getting behind MediaFLO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaFLO but I certainly suspect that it is another TV specific chipset at play.