WSJ Article: Testing TV on Your Cellphone

The Wall Street Journal had a good article last week reviewing the current MobiTV service on Sprint Nextel and AT&T’s Cingular networks. The outcome of the review is that MobiTV’s service is still the only one that provides "live" streaming of TV with no requirement of downloading the content to the device like the Verizon’s V Cast system requires.

All in all the MobiTV service got a pretty good review. The biggest downside to the experience for the reviewer was that her eyes got tired after 30 minutes due to the small screen not being the ideal device to watch long form content. Non surprise there, short form content is the only type that has a shot at making any traction on mobile devices. While the cost of the service was also outlined, that’s another one of the many factors that I believe keeps it from being adopted here in the States.

One thing I would of liked to have seen in the article is a breakdown on MobiTV’s subscriber numbers broken out by country or region. How many of the 2 million current subscribers are based in the U.S.? They don’t seem to say anywhere on their website or in their press releases. My guess is that less than 10% of their business is coming from the U.S. today.