Mobile DTV Alliance Broadens Mandate, Adds Focus on Harmonizing the Application and Service Layer for Mobile TV Technologies

SAN RAMON, Calif. — The Mobile DTV Alliance today announced an expansion in the scope of its activities to address the emerging mobile TV market. The Mobile DTV Alliance has extended its work on implementation guidelines to encompass the emerging Advanced Television System Committee standard for mobile broadcast - ATSC-M/H - and broadened the Mobile DTV Alliance charter to include industry collaboration activities with North American broadcasters.

In support of the new charter, the MDTVA today released a key deliverable, the North American Mobile TV Implementation Guidelines. Thus, the MDTVA establishes itself as a primary collaboration forum between companies of various industries interested in mobile TV deployments, implementations and global testing.

"The Mobile DTV Alliance has considerable experience developing mobile TV implementation guidelines and bringing the mobile broadcast industry together," said Walt Tamminen, president of the MDTVA. "Today we are excited to announce our refined focus on service interoperability, our expanded mission to collaborate with North American broadcasters, and the publication of our new mobile TV implementation guidelines, the common, interoperable service layer guidelines for multiple mobile TV technologies." With these changes, the MDTVA is well positioned to help mobile carriers and broadcasters drive further market growth of mobile TV services in a more interoperable manner.

Interactive mobile TV continues to be the primary focus of the MDTVA. It is also the main mobile TV service enabled by the newly released implementation guidelines. The guidelines are based on the global Mobile Broadcast Services Enabler (OMA BCAST 1.0) specification, specially developed to address convergent TV opportunities across a wide variety of access systems. "Looking to harmonize network technologies on the service layer, our new implementation guidelines cater to DVB-H based broadcast systems today and will include ATSC-M/H based broadcast systems in the near future," Tamminen said. "And since the guidelines are based on a global mainstream standard created by the Open Mobile Alliance, they are already being tested on a global scale by a wide variety of implementers."

The three key aspects of the MDTVA's implementation guidelines are:

-- an interoperable technical foundation that builds on the efforts of the Open Mobile Alliance;

-- support for multiple broadcast systems under a consistent service layer;

-- expanded content protection options with Microsoft PlayReady technology, which supports the application of a wide range of business models to many types of entertainment content.

About the Mobile DTV Alliance

The Mobile DTV Alliance is an open industry consortium that selects and promotes the best practices and open standards to deliver premium-quality broadcast television to mobile devices in North America and globally. Leading companies from across the mobile business system and entertainment value chain collaborate in the MDTVA. Sponsor members include Disney, Microsoft, and Nokia. For more information on the Mobile DTV Alliance, please visit http://www.mdtvalliance.org.