Qualcomm WCDMA Seminar At DCE: Mobile TV Applications

I had attended the Qualcomm India sponspored WCDMA Seminar at Delhi College of Engineering on the 5th of September. In the final session, Nikhil Jain, Chief Technology Officer, Qualcomm India, introduced technologies and content-creation software for Mobile TV broadcasting: MediaFlo and Brew.
According to Qualcomm estimates, consumers prefer to watch video content on their phone more than any other content. Mediaflo is a technology that allows real-time TV of 10-20 channels at around 30 frames per second, and a channel switching time of 1.5 seconds. According to Jain, multiple high quality channels and a spectral efficiency that is almost twice of that of its nearest competitor makes Mediaflo more cost effective. He also said that it also has low battery consumption that allows 4 hours of streaming video. A Qualcomm recommended mix of content using Mediaflo includes 15-20 video channels, 10 audio streams, upto 800 minutes of content. Other VAS like SMS, MMS, Music, VOD, Games etc can work simultaneously with the content, or could be related to the content being streamed. The broadcasting allows for both wide area and localised content to be broadcast to users. Qualcomm is getting ready for the commercialization of Mediaflo, and is currently creating an ecosystem for wider acceptance.
Jain then introduced Brew, a technology for content creation that Qualcomm is pushing. The key issues for any technology to be accepted are – capability of the technology, Terminal (handset) costs and cost of deployment in terms of spectrum usage. Brew, he said, is both an application software technology and a distributive technology. The latter makes it special, because content creators are able to track usage and downloads, and the application is tied to the handset and hence cannot be copied. He said that this is one major advantage that Brew has over J2EE.
In case of any technology, there are three key components that interact with each other – the user, the technology and the operator. Each interaction has its own resistance to change. For a new technology to be accepted, every component of this ecosystem needs to change, together, which is what Qualcomm is trying to do.

Note: Any comments on alternatives to or disadvantages of MediaFlo and Brew are welcome.