BusinessWeek: Video-on-the-go has long been a dream of cell-phone companies worldwide. Carriers have spent the better part of a decade building networks capable of carrying fast video streams, partly in hopes of boosting profits by hooking customers on clips of pop singers and soccer goals. But just as those networks are starting to work well enough that consumers might actually want to tune in, new technologies are emerging that could steer eyeballs away from the services.
The new systems will allow broadcasters to beam programming to tiny screens on the move, using technology akin to today's TV rather than more expensive cellular networks. One of the most promising, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting -- or DMB for short -- will soon go live in
South Korea. On Mar. 28, Seoul awarded licenses to six broadcasters who will start DMB programming by mid-summer. Mobile couch potatoes will be able to watch everything from baseball games and soap operas to the evening news -- all for free -- on cellular handsets equipped with special chips, which Korean giants Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. have started producing. Once the rollout is underway, the Korean researchers who developed the technology hope to persuade Europe to adopt it before next year's World Cup soccer competition in Germany.
I Think I'll Watch TV -- On My Cell Phone [BusinessWeek via Yahoo! News]
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