Mobile TV Phone, Tablet Coming at CES

Mobile TV is back. And this time, it's free. In advance of CES 2012, mobile TV venture Dyle, MetroPCS, and RCA announced plans to roll out a phone and tablet that support free, over-the-air mobile TV from NBC, Fox, Telemundo, Univision, and ION Networks.

MetroPCS promised an Android-powered Samsung phone with Dyle's free TV service "later this year." The company didn't give many more details other than to say the phone will support 4G LTE and have a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen. The phone will also have an extendable antenna, like Verizon Wireless's old FLO TV phones did. MetroPCS didn't give a price except to say that it would be a "premium" phone.

Dyle is a partnership between NBC, Fox, ION and nine local station owners, including Cox, Belo and Hearst.

One Phone, For Now
For now, the company is only announcing one smartphone with one carrier, though Dyle co-general manager (and NBC exec) Salil Dalvi noted that the MetroPCS deal wasn't exclusive.

"MetroPCS is first, they're leading the market, but you can envision if other carriers wanted to launch at some point I think everyone would be excited about that," he said.

The Dyle-compatible smartphone will be available in parts of MetroPCS's 14 major markets, although there will be a different numbers of channels in each city. New York and Los Angeles will each have 5-6 channels available, while Tampa may have just two, the service's other co-general manager (and FOX exec), Erik Moreno, said. The channels will be simulcasts of local TV channels, right down to the ads.

"In LA, for example, you'll see NBC, Fox, ION, Qubo and Telemundo," Dalvi said.

To watch shows, you'll load up a Dyle app and pick your show from an electronic program guide. There won't be any DVR capabilities at launch.

The programming will be free for now, but it might not always be that way. While Dyle will be free in 2012, Dalvi said, the group may consider charging for programming in the future. He later said the company is open to possibly using some of NBC and Fox's cable content (such as FX and Bravo) as well—those two ideas may go together.

"That's not on our roadmap for 2012, but it's obviously something we'll think very carefully about in the future," Dalvi said.

Along with the MetroPCS/Samsung/Dyle phone, CES will see a 7-inch, Android-powered tablet from RCA which will support the Dyle service, according to RCA spokesman Dave Arland.

The RCA tablet won't be sold as a full-fledged tablet—it'll be designed primarily to run the Dyle mobile TV app—but it'll run a version of Android (albeit without the Market) and have Web browsing and alarm clock functions, Arland said. He didn't give a release date or price for the new tablet.

One thing to remember, though: these are TVs, so they'll only work where you get broadcast TV signal. That means they'll work better by a window or outdoors than in an interior room.

"If there are issues indoors, we'll learn along the way," Dalvi said.

Why Local TV?
Rather than focusing on national hit programming (which the service will still have), Dalvi and Moreno said Dyle was most focused on local material: local news, weather, sports and a "replication of the living-room experience."

"The [2012] elections are a great example of content you'd want to see live," Dalvi said. "And local elections, the local news component, is what's going to be a critical piece not made available before."

Mobile TV also fits for MetroPCS, said Stephen Jemente, Metro's product manager for digital media. MetroPCS customers "over-index for digital media" and tend to use their phones as their "primary Internet device," so they're interested in consuming a lot of content on their phones.

And while MetroPCS spokesman Drew Crowell said the company still has plenty of room available on its new 4G LTE network, it can't hurt that this video is being transmitted over somebody else's spectrum.

Mobile TV: A Long Time Coming
This has been a long time coming. We've been hearing about broadcast mobile TV for years, but several attempts didn't take off. Qualcomm's MediaFlo made it into a few AT&T and Verizon phones before being shut down and its spectrum sold off to AT&T. Modeo, a potential competitor, never made it out of the gate.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition has been promoting an open standard, ATSC M/H, to be used by local broadcasters for a few years now. At CES 2010, the OMVC showed off several early devices including a prototype , and a box called the , which beamed mobile TV to iPhones and iPads.

None of those older devices will work with Dyle because Dyle's signal is encrypted, Dyle execs noted.

There's a semi-secret reason why TV broadcasters feel the urge to go mobile. Wireless carriers are hungrily eyeing the giant blocks of spectrum TV broadcasters have held for decades. If it comes down to a fight at the FCC over whose use is more in the public interest, it would help the broadcasters if millions of Americans were watching "American Idol" on their phones.

Dyle is one of two station groups supporting the open ATSC M/H standard, which lets local broadcasters send signals to mobile devices on their existing TV spectrum. The other group, The Mobile 500 Alliance, which includes 46 independent station owners with 420 stations nationwide, hasn't announced any retail products yet.