Tuesday, June 28, 2005
New Life for the Old UHF Band
By Om Malik, June 22, 2005
If you thought UHF had gone the way of eight tracks and Betamax, think again: The broadcast spectrum could be the future of television. This summer, cell-phone giant Nokia (NOK) and chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM) are launching multimillion-dollar trials aimed at bringing TV to cell phones over UHF -- home to channels 14 through 83 in the rabbit-ears days before cable. (While cell phones currently transmit signals over ultrahigh frequency, they use a different slice of the spectrum than UHF TV.) UHF systems could deliver to your handset 10 to 100 channels of interactive television, everything from sports highlights to episodes of Oprah. "Phones will be the best interactive TV environment around," claims Jeff Lorbeck, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm's UHF-focused MediaFlo business unit.
If you thought UHF had gone the way of eight tracks and Betamax, think again: The broadcast spectrum could be the future of television. This summer, cell-phone giant Nokia (NOK) and chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM) are launching multimillion-dollar trials aimed at bringing TV to cell phones over UHF -- home to channels 14 through 83 in the rabbit-ears days before cable. (While cell phones currently transmit signals over ultrahigh frequency, they use a different slice of the spectrum than UHF TV.) UHF systems could deliver to your handset 10 to 100 channels of interactive television, everything from sports highlights to episodes of Oprah. "Phones will be the best interactive TV environment around," claims Jeff Lorbeck, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm's UHF-focused MediaFlo business unit.
