Digi B'casting for Cellies Starts Fall '05
Quasi-governmental Nippon Hoso Kyokai or NHK and five private-sector broadcasters are likely to finally start services of terrestrial digital broadcasting for cellular phones in fiscal 2005, the Nikkei published in an article today, thanks, among other factors, to folks settling on the H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) standard. What the Nikkei has forgotten to mention also was that NHK will also broadcast to MBCO as well.
The agreement to use H.264 involves broadcasters paying MPEG LA a US$2,500 one-time fee for each encoder purchased for free broadcasting. This result suggests broadcasters have extracted a fairly substantial concession from MPEG LA, ruminates the Nikkei, considering that this is rather less than the $1 mllion MPEG LA was asking as an annual fee. Continue >>