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CyberLink believes in mobile TV

by on13 June 2008

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Computex 08: First with support for encryption


DVB-H is
still in its infancy, but the E.U. has decided that this is the standard that will be used Europe-wide for mobile digital TV. There are a lot of hurdles to pass before this will become reality and there are still some years until it will really take off, as first the analog networks have to be switched off.

You might wonder what this has to do with CyberLink, a company that most of us know as a DVD playback and video editing software company. Well, CyberLink is trying to break into new markets and the company have been making various TV-tuner applications for years now and have some pretty solid solutions on the market.

CyberLink has worked together with various content providers, broadcasters, hardware manufacturers and most importantly, maybe, the companies responsible for the various encryption systems used for digital TV. CyberLink has developed a range of solutions for both notebooks as the one on the picture below and for Windows Mobile devices.

What is interesting with the solution demoed at Computex, although it relied on pre-recorded content for the demo, the hardware used consisted of an all-in-one DVB-H/HSDPA modem. From what we were told, this should make it affordable to get a DVB-H receiver, especially in those countries where mobile operators are already part of the DVB-H broadcasters and content providers. The cost of such a product shouldn’t be much higher than for a standard HSDPA USB modem.

This also makes payments easy for premium content, as it’s all tied into the same solution and you just get billed on your next 3G data invoice. The SIM card could also double up as the smart card used with various digital television systems today, although this might again differ among the various service providers, as according to CyberLink some will be using special type of SD cards which will contain the decryption data.

The software interface is also quite straight forward, although what we saw was still an early version. The only problem is that there won’t be a single solution for all of Europe, as various content providers and broadcasters will use different encryption systems, although the free channels should hopefully work on the same system all over Europe.

CyberLink has also been busy developing software for other systems such as 1-Seg and 4-Seg in Japan, T-DMB in Korea and currently in Germany and standard DVB-T.

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Last modified on 13 June 2008
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