[timothythetim]

Right, if I understand correctly, on orange some people watch TV with the TV app and some people can watch it through a link on the orange homepage.
With three, watching big brother is done by vidoe calling 31010.
Which way works/will work best, and which dyou think will be cheapest for the providers?
I quite like the idea of video calling a number. You could call TELLY1 for BBC and TELLY3 for ITV and so on.
Btw, anyone know when/if three plan on doing tv other than big brother at bomb a minute?

[Ben]

Well apparently they're also doing the horse racing at £1/min!

On Orange there's OTV, and then other users have selected streams available via Orange World, yes.

I'd imagine the cheapest way for the networks is to stream the video over the data connection. A video call is circuit switched at 64kbps, as far as I understand, so a packet data session at up to 384kbps should be a clear advantage. Data connections are also more forgiving as they can be buffered.

I think I'd rather have an application, like OTV, for choosing channels. I'm not keen on the idea of video calling for streams as there seems to be no indication of what the call cost for each shortcode actually is. Of course, it'll all end up as digitally broadcast mobile TV anyway in the end, which will be significantly cheaper than either video calling or packet delivery.

[3GScottishUser]

Both Virgin and 02 are now experimenting with DVB-H and DAB to broadcast TV to mobiles. This is a one-to-many service just like normal broadcast TV and looks like the most cost effective method of distributing TV to mobile devices. I doubt if any network will want to use up bandwidth broadcasting TV to individuals as if that proves to be popular it'll would'nt take too long before cell sites run out of capacity providing Video on Demand on bandwidth installed to provide voice/text and data.

Both of the current 3G TV offerings are temporary and probably more to do with marketing hype rather than actual mass market appeal but the response will determine how this product develops.