Europe
UK : Mobile technology development company, ROK Entertainment, today
announced it has 'stolen a march' on the major Mobile Networks with
it's new Place-Shifting set-top box due to be available in time to
deliver the World Cup football finals to mobiles.
The ROK Black Box (code-named BLCX ) set-top box throws TV channels
live to mobile phones via broadband internet.
"It seemed to us that delivery of the World Cup matches live
to mobile phones would be a fantastic opportunity for the development
of mobile TV services" said Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and CEO
of ROK "but it now appears that only edited highlights of the
matches are to made available, mainly for people on 3G and even then
on a pay-per-view basis."
"That seemed terribly limited to us, so we set out to develop
BLCX to enable people to watch all their home TV channels live whenever
and wherever they wish on their mobiles" added Kendrick.
"Providing you have broadband at home, you simply plug your BLCX
into your TV and you can watch whichever channels you have at home,
live and in full, on your mobile, wherever you are on a 'what I want,
when I want' basis. You can even change the channels from your mobile."
The subject of mobile TV is one which is generating a great deal of
interest globally as mobile TV is seen as 'The Next Big Thing' with
regard to mobile content. Nokia and O2 recently completed a trial
in Oxford using DVB-H technology to broadcast live TV to specially-adapted
handsets, while Virgin Mobile has announced it's intention to offer
TV broadcast on mobiles via DAB technology. Both technologies appear
some way off yet.
"There is no doubt that there will be massive convergance of
TV onto mobile phones over the next few years . It's just a question
of which technologies will be used to deliver the service" Kendrick
explained.
"Two technologies are immediately available, the first being
via existing mass-market 2.5G GPRS technology, on which most mobile
phones operate, which is able to provide on-demand multi-channel TV
- as shown by ROK TV (www.rok.tv) - while the second is 'place-shifting'
TV-for-mobiles via the internet as offered by ROK's BLCX."
The first BLCX units will be available from June 1st at a cost of
around £250 each or for a monthly rental fee of around £12
.
