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Handset TV shouldn't be the exclusive domain of corporate broadcasters. Citizen reporters should get their chance to break live news - or broadcast whatever they like, one would think - over the still gestating mobile television networks; specifically those built on the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) standard, according to ComVu.

DVB-H short course: One of several competing digital TV standards on the road to market (Qualcomm's MediFlo is the most notable of the others), DVB-H proposes broadcasting television signals separately from traditional cellular-data networks. This frees up bandwidth for other mobile operator content and promises better quality video to the consumer.

ComVu is demonstrating an application called PocketCaster at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas this week. PocketCaster currently works over 3G networks, but will soon - if all goes well - leverage DVB-H as well. To that end, ComVu showed off mobile TV integration for its service with DVB-H specialist Modeo and that company's DVB-H-capable (HTC-built) Pocket PC Phone; first introduced at CTIA 2006 earlier in the month.

Modeo successfully pilot tested its DVB-H mobile broadcast network in Pittsburgh (where it is headquartered) last year. It plans to officially launch service in select major U.S. markets, including New York City, later this year. Nationwide deployment, in the top 30 U.S. markets, is targeted throughout 2007. Research group Informa Telecoms & Media believes that there will be 74 million DVB-H subscribers by 2010, more than 50 percent of all mobile TV handset sales.

Currently, ComVu says PocketCaster's streams live video from select Windows Mobile 5.0-based camera phones over 3G networks to one to few thousand simultaneous viewers via a free beta service.

With DVB-H, however, the number of potential viewers a user can stream video to grows significantly. ComVu CEO William Mutual said the company "will enable the ultimate distribution solution for citizen-powered journalism and user-generated content with immediate reach by next year to an audience in the tens of millions worldwide."

Hey, if you're lucky, you'll get American Idol numbers for you're live on-the-spot handset reporting.

Mutual said to PDAStreet that the purpose of its demo with Modeo was to show how easy ComVu could expand their capability and that ComVu's proposition to Modeo is this: "We expect our client to be available in tens of millions of phones over the next year and half. And it's likely that your going to get people on the scene hours before camera crew can get there. And they can get the video live in a timely immediate manner that'll really alter the whole communication paradigm."

He suggested that his company is in an ideal position to serve as gatekeeper of that content. "If someone thinks they have the goods that the world will be interested in, we would review it, port it over to DVB-H and then Modeo could make it available on one of its channels," according to Mutual.

Users would uplink their live video feed via a phone or handheld through a 3G or Wi-Fi connection from the 'scene,' and then ComVu would port it over to Modeo. DVB-H cannot serve as the uplink mechanism.

Mutual emphasized to PDAStreet that there's no deal or defined business proposition between ComVu and Modeo. They were just showing how this would work at NAB. He added, however, "I can tell you that many people at NAB thought that whole idea was the coolest thing that they saw at the show."

Should ComVu gain access to Modeo's DVB-H network, its users would be able to "literally go to the globe. But the only time that makes sense is when there's content that the globe will want to watch," Mutual cautioned. He said that capability would still only be an extension of its regular business model, which is to offer concurrent users the ability to make their own live mini broadcasts.

"It is a natural evolution of what's coming down the pike. We're just trying to position ourselves for that opportunity as it blossoms," he said

Here's how ComVu works:

You press button on a phone, which opens a tunnel between the handset and the company's network operations center. After a user is logged in, he or she can stream live video to however many viewers they want. The content owner has complete control.

ComVu is integrated with all the commercial blogging services, for instance, so the user can stream live video to their blog. They can also SMS or IM anyone and send them a link to a live transmission. Right now the service works with any Windows Media compatible player. ComVu is probably three months away from launching a parallel network, which will be compatible with the 3GP/QuickTime video standards. "At that point we'll basically cover all streaming delivery formats," Mutual asserted.

Mutual said ComVu has working builds of virtually all other operating systems, and they are shopping the service with the operators, as an optional monthly subscription, like ringtones or any other options a carrier might offer.

Value proposition to carriers is for them to leverage their underused uplink channels. Mutual said, "This is a completely untapped resource of the carriers right now. Everyone we spoke to claims it's under once percent capacity. Their downlink channel has a lot more usage. We are going to give the carrier's an entirely new way to sell data. And of course that's very important."

ComVu also has what Mutual called a very sophisticated desktop client, which can be used with a fixed line service (e.g. DSL or cable) via a USB camera, for example. "All the client software that we're speaking of, they are efficient gateways for users into our automated streaming media network. And that's where our real proprietary intellectual property lies," he stated

More on Modeo Handset
The Modeo Pocket PC Phone isn't due to ship until the second half of the year. We got a chance to handle one while it was receiving television signals from an adhoc DVB-H network at CTIA. The quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE smartphone measures 4.1 x 2.2 x 0.6 inches and weighs 4.23 ounces. It has a Texas Instruments OMAP850 200 MHz CPU, 64 MB of ROM, 64MB of RAM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a microSD card slot (for up to 1 GB of extra storage), and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

It is one of the first handsets to integrate NVIDIA's new high performance Go-Force 5500 handheld graphics processing unit, which runs at such a low wattage, when I touched one running full throttle at the CTIA, I barely felt any heat at all. The graphics engine operates a 2.2-inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixel), 64K-color TFT display at up to 30 fps. Modeo says the smartphone's 1150 mAH lithium-ion battery provides up to three hours of TV viewing, four hours of talk time or six days of standby time.

An electronic service guide (ESG) created by Penthera Technologies provides access to free, subscription, pay-per-view and other protected content with an approach familiar to anyone who has used a cable or satellite TV service.

Modeo heavily integrates Microsoft technologies, not just the operating system. The phone receives and plays Modeo DVB-H mobile broadcasts delivered using Windows Media Video and Windows Media Digital Rights Management. Modeo also uses Windows Media Player 10 Mobile to playback video and music stored in multiple formats onboard in the WMA MP3 and AAC formats.