The competition to find China's official mobile TV standard has finally begun, without the participation of the film and broadcast agency SARFT.
SARFT, which is backing the CMMB standard, declined to take part in the original bake-off in early December, putting the event on hold. The contest, organised by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), resumed on December 26, according to the Nanfang Daily.
Participants in the testing include Beijing Nufrontsoft, which is pushing T-MMB technology, Tsinghua University's DMB-TH, CDMB, proposed by the China Association of Standards (CAS), and IMMB, developed by Beijing i-Vision.
SAC has engaged six research institutes to support the testing, including some experts from SARFT institutes. But an industry source said that with SARFT's absence it was inevitable that China would have both a national mobile TV standard and one or more industry standards.
SARFT, which has already set CMMB as the mobile TV standard for the broadcast sector, has said it will play the role of referee, not a player, because its CMMB products were not ready, a source said.
A figure from the standards camp said CMMB needed at least three years of development and "could not possibly be commercially ready for the 2008 Olympics".
But a CMMB chip developer denied this, claiming that CMMB networks were already transmitting ten channels and predicting that Olympics visitors would be able to watch multi-channel mobile TV for free.
Regardless of the outcome of the bake-off, the backers of the rival technologies are intent on commercialization.
Right now, trial DMB-TH networks have been built in Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Liaoning, Sichuan and elsewhere. CDMB in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places on the Pearl River Delta. One source said, "It's very tense. Everyone is watching each other, but now the key is to produce real, mature products that work."
CAS secretary-general Lou Peide said no matter what the result of the testing, "the CDMB standard will continue to be developed."
CMMB has already been chosen as a major technology project under the 11th five-year plan, and has received 80 million yuan support from the Ministry of Science & Technology (MST).
sina.com
reports that already 145 terminal device companies are committed to making CMMB devices, among them Nokia, Motorola, LG, Dopod, Lenovo, ZTE and UTStarcom.