Samsung proposes mobile-TV alternative

Las Vegas -- Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. introduced a new technology for enabling mobile TV in North America last week, and planned to conduct a trial of it here in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show. Advanced-VSB is a proposed open standard that enables broadcasters to transmit a mobile digital TV signal on the same frequency they use for standard television broadcasting. The technology requires a relatively small investment by broadcasters, Samsung said, and could be available in mobile products as soon as 2008.

A-VSB enhances the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) vestigial-sideband digital TV standard, said John Godfrey, vice president of government and public affairs at Samsung Information Systems America. It enables mobile devices with an A-VSB tuner to receive the mobile-TV signal but does not interfere with standard digital TV reception, he said. A low broadcaster investment "in the tens of thousands" of dollars means the technology can be commercially available quickly, Godfrey said. Broadcasters do need to add a small amount of equipment to their existing towers to deploy mobile TV via A-VSB, he said, but do not need to invest in new towers or in new spectrum.

A-VSB allows broadcasters to include multiple "turbo-coded" streams along with their main stream to strengthen and clarify signals, according to Samsung. The technology also eases synchronization of broadcast signal timing of different towers in a single-frequency network, the company said.

Samsung said that A-VSB technology is now being standardized and tested within ATSC.