1-Seg broadcasting opens a new
dimension to mobile users
1-Seg is officially being serviced and a host of new applications for this growing
market are being developed for mobile devices. Recently, several market research firms reported and are predicting the growth
of 1-Seg mobile broadcasting; 1-Seg based business models have already been proposed by NHK/KDDI alliance and the Fuji
Television/Recruit alliance. As you can see from those articles, 1-Seg may become one of the key elements that drive the
mobile market in the future. In this special edition of Trend Watch, we will focus on what’s going on in the 1-Seg
market.
Terrestrial digital broadcasting, which started in December 2003, is changing the lifestyle of TV viewers as audio, video and
data are being broadcasted simultaneously in programs. Another important aspect of terrestrial digital broadcasting is the
integration with mobile technologies. One channel of terrestrial digital broadcasting is divided into 13 "segments"
(division). Among these 13 divisions, 12 segments are used for television transmission (12 segments are needed for HDTV
transmissions or 4 segments are needed for SDTV) and 1 segment is designated for mobile devices. The name “1-Seg” comes from
the technical designation of the “1 segment” that is reserved for mobile devices.
http://www.d-pa.org/about/index.html (Japanese Site)
D-PA is an organization that was
established to ensure the smooth transition of terrestrial television from the current analogue encoding to the digital
broadcasting format and to promote digital terrestrial television broadcasting.
1-Seg service became available on April 1 and now 13 major TV stations 115 local TV stations participate in mobile
broadcasting. This means that almost all Japanese TV stations broadcast their programs/content to mobile devices so that
users can enjoy watching the same TV programs on their mobile devices.
Technically, 1-Seg uses H.264 video and AAC audio encapsulated in MPEG2 transport stream and 64QAM for modulation. Maximum
video resolution is 320 x 240 pixels (1/4 VGA) and maximum video bitrate is 128kbs.
There are 2 types of 1-Seg devices that currently exist in the market. The first type of device is combined with mobile
phones. All mobile carriers, including DoCoMo, au and Sfotbank, are currently in this market. Mobile phone carriers are also
developing high-speed down-stream service such as HSDPA and 1xEVDO which may enable providers to broadcast video programs so
that it may have certain business conflict in the future. At this moment, KDDI au seems to be the most aggressive in terms of
business development.
The second type is dedicated to 1-Seg digital players developed by Toshiba and SONY. Those products are more or less intended
to add values to their existing hardware product lines. 1-Seg models currently available are shown below:
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