Mobile DTV Takes A Step Closer To Reality

Mobile Content Venture, a joint venture of Fox, NBC and leading TV station groups, has secured its first arrangement with a wireless carrier for the marketing of its planned Dyle mobile DTV service, it was announced this morning.

The carrier is MetroPCS, the nation’s fifth largest with some nine million subscribers.

Sometime later this year, it will offer a new Samsung smartphone with a mobile DTV tuner chip and telescoping antenna. Subscribers who choose the phone, download the Dyle app and register will be able to watch “national and local” programming broadcast by TV stations.

“For us, this is as big as it gets,” said Erik Moreno, co-general manager of MCV. “With MetroPCS, we have closed the loop with our first distributor.”

“MetroPCS is going to be introducing a first-rate handset from a first-rate handset maker,” added Salil Dalvi, MCV’s other co-general manager.

MetroPCS’s Steven Jemente said his company’s subscribers tend to use their phones more heavily for new media than those of other carriers. “This is just another benefit to the customer, another service. They’ll be able to now consume live broadcast television.”

According to Metro PSC, the phones will be made available in 14 markets: New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas, Tampa, Sacramento, Calif., and Jacksonville, Fla.

“MetroPCS has close to 6,000 points of distribution that include our direct corporate-owned stores and authorized resellers so we will have quite a big force and splash within our marketing touch points,” said Jemente.

The announcement was timed to build interest for mobile DTV at the Consumer Electronics Show, which takes over Las Vegas all of next week.

Moreno said that MCV will be making an additional announcement leading up to the show, but would not elaborate. He also said there would be a “development” version of the new Dyle-enabled phone in the MCV booth there.

To provide mobile DTV service, a station uses a small portion of its digital channel to broadcast an ATSC-standardized mobile DTV signal, which is suitable only for small screens — smartphones, tablets, netbooks and the like — but is rugged enough to be received on such mobile devices, perhaps even in moving cars.

Since its formation in early 2010, MCV has been working hard to bring all the pieces of a mobile DTV service together, but progress on its Dyle-branded service has been slow.

To make a go of it, MCV needs deals with the major wireless carriers and their associated device makers and it needs to secure mobile rights to a critical mass of network and syndicated programming.

Moreno and Dalvi are still not ready to say when the service will be launched, when other carriers may come on board or what exactly the programming package will include.

“We’re trying to bring the living room experience for broadcast to the Dyle experience,” said Moreno. “I will leave it at that for now. I am not going to give you the programming grid 24/7 at this stage. We’re going to bring you as much of your favorite content as possible.”

Moreno and Dalvi did allow that at least some Fox and NBC programming would be available to complement local programming, presumably news, offered by affiliates and O&Os.

Moreno said the programming would vary from market to market depending on which broadcasters were participating.

“So, for example, in Los Angeles, you’re going to have a significant tonnage of content because we will have Fox, NBC, Ion, Qubo, Univision and Telemundo,” he said. “In some of the other Metro PCS markets, you might get only Fox and NBC. We’re going to be working very hard post this announcement to make sure we get other broadcasters on to strengthen the content.”

The press release on the MetroPCS deal noted that MCV has picked up three more participating broadcasters: Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo and station group Bahakel Communications.

In addition to Fox and NBC, charter members of the consortium are Ion Media, Belo, Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, Media General, Meredith, Post-Newsweek Stations and Raycom Media.

Jemente was also stingy with details, declining to address how the phone and service would be marketed and priced.

Moreno and Dalvi emphasized that the basic service they envisioned will be free. But MCV signals will be encrypted so that consumers will have to register for the service. This will let MCV track and count users and layer on pay services in the future.

The first generation of mobile DTV phones has been criticized for needing fragile outboard antennas, but Jemente made no apology for the antenna on the new Samsung phone.

“It’s absolutely discrete,” he said. “Only when you’re in the middle of your television experience does the antenna comes out. It’s a very good looking sexy device that otherwise a consumer would not know that it was a mobile DTV handset.”