With a mobile TV app, we can watch on phone popular news and entertainment channels just as on fixed TV sets. Some apps are free, others are on a freemium model wherein some channels are paid and others are free. The apps can be downloaded on any internet-enabled smartphone of any operating system.
Consumption of live and recorded video footage on mobile devices has been steadily increasing over the years. During the recent London Olympics, there was a surge in demand. Live streaming of events on IOC's YouTube channel was a big hit as it offered users the option to pick their favourite sport from many that were simultaneously taking place. BBC said it received 102 million requests for live streams, catch-up coverage and clips during the games. The most popular event was the tennis finals, with over 820,000 requests.
There are many apps available for different operating systems . If figures are anything to go by, this segment has been gaining popularity in India. DigiVive , for example, announced that its app, NexGTv, recorded 15 million viewership during the India-Sri Lanka cricket series between July 21 and August 7.
Adaptive streaming
G D Singh, director, DigiVive, says there has been a huge surge in the interest for mobile TV apps across all platforms . "NexGTv app has been recording nearly half a million downloads a month, and it has been downloaded 3.7 million times. It's among the top five apps on all stores," he said. "We also have long movies in 20-minute condensed format. This is to help people who don't have the time to watch the entire film."
There are over 100 live television channels available on NexGTv app. Last week, the company added live streaming of Times Now and ET Now channels on its application. Besides these, the app also offers its users the option of videos on demand and replay.
Singh says the company has worked around some common problems mobile users face in India. One of them is low bandwidth . "We have adaptive streaming, wherein the software identifies the connectivity strength and adjusts the resolution to enable continuous streaming.
Some of the other features of the user interface are integrated Electronic Program Guide, reordering and deletion of channels, interactive onscreen controls, brightness control and volume control.
Sony Watchman
Mobile television is not an entirely new concept As early as 1977, small, pocket-sized portable television called Microvision was available in the UK and the US, but they didn't gain popularity for various reasons.
Five years later, Sony brought out Watchman — a small radio-sized device with a tiny, 5 cm, screen that could display television images. Most of India didn't have even Doordarshan, when Watchman hit the markets in Japan. Two years later, they were sold in the US and Europe.
Over the following 15 years, Sony brought in lots improvements to the device, until 1998 when it became dysfunctional because of switchover from analogue to digital. Mobile television started gaining popularity in the United States and South Korea between 2002 and 2005, with phone operators providing the option to their subscribers.
In India, the trend has been on the upswing during the last two to three years and many companies have come out with apps. The main driving forces are easy availability of affordable and high-feature smartphones and good 3G internet connection.
Some television channels have their own mobile app. There are now many third party mobile TV apps that provide scores of channels. Some of the popular are NexGTv, Mundu TV and Yupp TV. Ditto TV is another , that has a 48-hour free-trial for all its channels. Yet another app, Zenga TV, added live streaming to iPhones this month.
