The Dallas-based wireless carrier on Friday took the wraps off a long-promised smartphone that is capable of receiving the Dyle mobile broadcasts of stations aligned with the Mobile Content Venture, the consortium of NBC, Fox and leading TV groups.
MetroPCS Offers Mobile DTV Smartphone
On Friday, MetroPCS began offering its wireless customers a new high-end 4G smartphone with a built-in tuner for receiving mobile DTV broadcasts.
The Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G sells for $459 with no annual contract and tax-and-regulatory-fee-inclusive service plans starting at just $40 per month.
The Android phone, the first with the mobile DTV capability, will be able to receive the Dyle-branded service being offered by the Mobile Content Venture, a joint venture of NBC, Fox and leading TV station groups.
MetroPCS said the Dyle serve is available at no additional charge to customers with a MetroPCS 4G LTE service plan.
The availability of the phone “demonstrates another innovative way broadcasters are using their spectrum to reach audiences,” the NAB said in a statement.
The phone will give “consumers access to local broadcasting’s premier content, including live, local news, entertainment, sports programming and emergency information, all in the palm of their hand,” the trade group added.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
Powered by Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), the phone features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen, 1GHz processor, an 8.0 megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash and 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera.
The phone is also the first to feature 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot, allowing customers to share their MetroPCS 4G LTE connection and data with multiple Wi-Fi-enabled devices.
Comments (1)
Christina Perez says:
August 6, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Free over the air local broadcast stations could be the bait for cellphone makers who put the mobile DTV chip into their phones — which would give consumers local TV service with absolutely no strings attached, no need to go through any third-party service like Dyle. Hand-held digital TV sets with mobile DTV capability already are on the market, and small digital TVs without the mobile capability still can receive local stations as long as the unit remains stationary. I’m betting competition in the marketplace will persuade cellphone makers to exploit free over the air mobile digital TV — direct from local stations — as the bait to sell add-on programming packaged and marketed by cellphone carriers or perhaps even by broadcasters.