Techdirt is off for the long weekend! We'll be back with our regular posts tomorrow.
Sony Makes Tiny TV Tuner Chip for Mobile Phones
One of the problems current mobile video solutions have is the high cost of mobile video services. With a one-to-one “monocast”, there are no economies of scale, and every person on the network who chooses to see a video adds to the network congestion. The solution is to somehow broadcast video to mobile phones, but the size and battery consumption of a TV tuner have proved challenging for the mobile devices. Now Sony has developed Sony has developed a TV tuner chip that will grab digital TV signals, and can turn the mobile phone into a TV. The sample module will sell for 50,000 yen ($445), but that price is just the current cost for hardware vendors who wish to prototype with the chip. Eventually, the chips will have to sell for $20 or less to be included in mobile handsets. Now we just need someone to get TiVo onto mobiles… Update by Mike Tsk, tsk, Derek. This story comes just a week after we wrote the exact same thing – including the TiVo crack – about Samsung’s similar offering. That’s what happens when Derek is on the road and not reading Techdirt… Response: Touche! What scares me most is we both made the same joke.
Comments on “Sony Makes Tiny TV Tuner Chip for Mobile Phones”
WHen?
Samsung actually launched that machine about 3 months ago in Korea, and it ran a few weeks back just like no-one had ever ran it before, when it came west.