Telly Provides Mobile Television to iPhone

[MacRumors]

PacketVideo posted a video demonstrating Telly, a mobile broadcast receiver. The "matchbook sized" device streams live television over Wifi to your iPhone (or other Wifi enabled device). It can provide 3 hours of television on a full charge.

YouTube Video

How it works is the Telly device receives television signals and encodes them in realtime into Quicktime for use on the iPhone. Telly appears to act as a local web server, providing the iPhone with a local url to interact with it. The user interface is entirely within Safari and television is streamed over WiFi to the iPhone.

Telly was first demoed in February at Mobile World Congress and will be available "later this year". No word on pricing is yet available.

Article Link

[kjs862]

Wow thats awsome

[Pippen Man]

I can see them create an app from the SDK to really create a great product.

[darwen]

that is genius! great concept! It took me a second to figure out even after I saw it working. I couldn't figure out what the little white box was for. Makes perfect sense though.

[PoitNarf]

I'll be more excited when the SlingPlayer app comes around.

[wakerider017]

Meh, I am not impressed.

If the iPhone/iPod is in a WiFi hotspot why not just use EyeTV? Leave your Mac on at home and run EyeTV's integrated server software.

Presto! Unlimited TV content streamed directly to you iPhone!

[Fuchal]

Why would you ever watch TV on your phone when you are within wifi range of your much larger TV?

[ehurtley]

Their website mentions "TDtv, DVB-H and MediaFLO" as the TV formats it supports.

No mention of ATSC. (The new US standard broadcast TV format. Or, for that matter, NTSC; but that's going to go away in less than a year, so that's not a loss.)

All three are mobile-phone standards for video, and as such, would require a subscription. This is not an end-user purchase device for watching TV on the go, it's a mobile phone operator sold device for adding live video to phones that otherwise support it in their lineup. (As a compliment to phones that natively support one of the three formats.)

AT&T Mobility has thrown its hat in with "MediaFLO", marketing it as "AT&T Mobile TV", and charges $15 a month for access to 10 channels. Right now, they offer it on two devices. One of them is an LG that looks a lot like an iPhone.

P.S. It would appear that this device itself acts as a WiFi hotspot. It would be rather useless if you had to be within range of an existing WiFi hotspot. (And since, by definition, it has to be connected to a 3G mobile network, maybe it would bring 3G data to older mobiles, too.)

[nostaws]

I'll be more excited when the SlingPlayer app comes around.

This is the only reason that a lot of my friends are holding out before they get an iphone.

[MacTheSpoon]

Wow, that looks pretty good! I might get that.

[brianbobcat]

Originally Posted by ehurtley

Their website mentions "TDtv, DVB-H and MediaFLO" as the TV formats it supports.

No mention of ATSC. (The new US standard broadcast TV format. Or, for that matter, NTSC; but that's going to go away in less than a year, so that's not a loss.)

I'm not doubting you on that as you sound very knowledgeable about said technologies and I have frankly never even heard of them, however, I can testify that the video they watch is from WLS-TV, the Chicago ABC affiliate and that that newscast was in HD, hence the widescreen. I live in Chicago and know both that newsdesk and those anchors, so either they will be supporting OTA ATSC or that video was pre-encoded and only streamed to the iPhone. Also, the iPhone appears to say AT&T, again indicating that this test was done in the US, thus ATSC and not DVB-T.

Still, I would love to see this device even though I have an EyeTV, I don't like some of the options they haven't enabled for me.

-Brian

[ehurtley]

Originally Posted by brianbobcat

I'm not doubting you on that as you sound very knowledgeable about said technologies and I have frankly never even heard of them, however, I can testify that the video they watch is from WLS-TV, the Chicago ABC affiliate and that that newscast was in HD, hence the widescreen. I live in Chicago and know both that newsdesk and those anchors, so either they will be supporting OTA ATSC or that video was pre-encoded and only streamed to the iPhone. Also, the iPhone appears to say AT&T, again indicating that this test was done in the US, thus ATSC and not DVB-T.

Still, I would love to see this device even though I have an EyeTV, I don't like some of the options they haven't enabled for me.

-Brian

It was a canned video. It *HAD* to be, based on the specs. This is a device that has no standard terrestrial antenna. It's not even DVB-T, it's DVB-H, which isn't an "over the air" broadcast standard. This device gets its video solely through a 3G data connection. They also mention WiMax. There is no WiMax standard for 'broadcast television', it is solely a packet data system.

[anim8or]

Why would you want to carry around a device when you could watch TV over WiFi using such things as BBC iPlayer and what ever else is out there now and in the future.

I think a lot more TV companies/stations/channels will jump on the 'iPlayer-esque' bandwagon once it gets going.

[RedTomato]

Any support for closed captions / subtitles?

It's important to get these things in early on the start, not as an afterthought.

Not just for deaf people, I can imagine some noisy environments where you can't hear the phone (e.g. on a crowded train) or don't want to use headphones.

[joshysquashy]

Originally Posted by RedTomato

Any support for closed captions / subtitles?

It's important to get these things in early on the start, not as an afterthought.

Not just for deaf people, I can imagine some noisy environments where you can't hear the phone (e.g. on a crowded train) or don't want to use headphones.

If I could watch TV on Edge/GPRS, then that would be something paying for - TV on the go. Can it change channels on your set top box?

[JMax1]

how does it "receive signals?" Through wifi? through phone service (3G GPRS?)? Can you leave it plugged in for watching more tv?

Still a ::little:: confused on those details

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I want one!! This is really cool.

[Santa Rosa]

Dont you just love those promotional soundtracks

I took it that the device worked as a standalone, creating its own wireless network you connected your iPhone to, which then enabled the TV to be watched as it encoded it.

Could be cool when your on the road maybe...

[isoMorpheus]

I don't think you have to be in a hotspot to watch the TV, the device itself works as a hotspot. Meaning, once charged, you can watch TV anywhere where there is TV signal.

[ehurtley]

Alright. From what I can glean from the demo and the specs, here is my assumption on how it works:

1. It gets it "television" signal not through the standard free broadcast TV you normally think of as "TV", but through one of a number of data services through a 3G mobile phone connection. This means you have to subscribe to a "Mobile TV" service from your mobile phone carrier. In the U.S. AT&T offers it for $15 a month. All of these "Mobile TV" services are pure packet data, generally using the 3GPP video codec, which is 100% supported by the iPhone. (It's the format encoded by QuickTime's "Mini" setting.)

2. It then acts as its own WiFi hotspot, has a small web server for the menu structure, and wraps the 3GPP video in a standard QuickTime wrapper so the iPhone understands it.

There is no conventional "over the air tuner", there is no video encoder or transcoder. All it does is stream a packet data video feed from 3G to WiFi.

The main reason is that the US's new ATSC signal is a high bitrate MPEG-2 stream. It requires a not insignificant amount of power to decode MPEG-2, and more yet to re-encode it into something else. Far too much power to put into a "matchbook sized" device and still retain any reasonable amount of battery life.

Again: This is useless without a paid subscription to "Mobile TV" from a mobile phone carrirer. It does not receive the same type of signal as the TV in your living room with rabbit ears.

[bytethese]

Originally Posted by wakerider017

Meh, I am not impressed.

If the iPhone/iPod is in a WiFi hotspot why not just use EyeTV? Leave your Mac on at home and run EyeTV's integrated server software.

Presto! Unlimited TV content streamed directly to you iPhone!

What Mac at home? I don't leave my laptop on 24/7.

[bytethese]

I'm a little confused. If I have to subscribe to a "MobileTV" service, forget it. Can this thing be left at home and used over the internet and accessed via iPhone while at a hotspot? It seems like this is not the case. For me, I'd love to have a SlingPlayer for iPhone and just buy a SlingBox so that no matter where I am, I can watch TV, DVR'd shows or even set my DVR to record when I forget something.

I'm thinking of the ultimate uber geeky sports watching. I'm hoping (lots of hoping) the new Yankee Stadium will have WiFi in it (why not, lots of other new stadiums do right?). If so, and I have a SlingBox at home, I can fire up the SlingPlayer on my iPhone and watch instant replays while sitting in my seats! *dr00ls*

[ehurtley]

Originally Posted by bytethese

I'm a little confused. If I have to subscribe to a "MobileTV" service, forget it. Can this thing be left at home and used over the internet and accessed via iPhone while at a hotspot? It seems like this is not the case. For me, I'd love to have a SlingPlayer for iPhone and just buy a SlingBox so that no matter where I am, I can watch TV, DVR'd shows or even set my DVR to record when I forget something.

You have it exactly right.

This is *NOT* a replacement for a SlingPlayer, or an EyeTV WiFi. This is a mobile cell phone network live streaming video receiver, with built-in WiFi access point. Its sole purpose is to add cell phone network live streaming video to mobile phones that don't natively support it. For example, AT&T offers an iPhone-styled LG, or a Samsung, that supports this service. This new "Telly" device would allow iPhones, or Nokia smartphones (plus potentially others,) to access the service.

Here is a link for the AT&T page on the service. This new "Telly" device is merely an external "receiver" for this service. If you want to watch something that isn't offered by AT&T, you're out of luck, no matter what the local over-the-air broadcast channels are, or what you have on your cable at home.

The channels offered by AT&T are:
"CBS Mobile", which does not necessarily carry the exact same programming at the exact same time as terrestrial CBS, and has no local content.
"CNN Live Mobile", which is, again, not exactly the same as the terrestrial/cable station, but is similar.
Comedy Central, one of the few that appears to be a direct feed of the normal station.
"ESPN Mobile TV", yet again, a "custom" channel, not the same as the cable station.
"Fox Mobile", I think you're starting to get the picture here.
MTV, again, appears to be a direct feed.
"NBC 2GO", which, for example, airs reruns of Jay Leno at noon, and Conan O'Brien at 2:00 PM.
"NBC News 2GO", which appears to be an amalgam of regular broadcast NBC news programs, and the CNBC and MSNBC cable networks.
Nickelodeon
"PIX", a movie channel.

That's it.

No PBS, ABC, or CW, amont others. So if you wanted to watch Nova, Desperate Housewives, or America's Next Top Model on the go, forget it.

[Fonzijr1964]

looks ok but the eye tv is better

[Don't panic]

this thing will become obsolete the second the iPhone goes 3G.