Mobile TV has never become as popular in the United States as it has in other countries, especially Japan and Korea. However the Open Mobile TV Alliance a group of commercial and public broadcaster is pushing the technology, They believe the number of mobile TV users will double in numbers by 2013. What makes MDTV different then previous version of mobile TV efforts such as FloTV is first it is being supported by both commercial and public broadcast, second it is also a free. One of the companies that is counting on this increase is RCA. RCA is showing a number of mobile TV devices including a 7 inch DMT270R and a couple of 3 inch mobile TV, the DMT270R and the DMT336R at CES 2011. RCA will also be launching a tuner to install in the automobile. They will be able to receive both standard ATSC) and Mobile DTV . Valup a Korean company has created the Tivizen iUS-100 receiver which will connect directly to the Ipad and allow you to receive TV directly on your Ipad. This product should be available in June 2011. Right now the Mobile DTV signal has only rolled out to certain cities a full list can be found at the mdtvsignalmap.
The coalition hopes that has more devices can receive the signal it can roll out to more cities. The MDTV signal is a special mobile signal separate from the normal over the air TV signal. It is more reliable in a mobile environment. The signal is also separate from the signal used by cellphones, so there is no interference there either. It shouldn’t matter how many people are using their phones in an area, the MDTV signal should still come through. It will be interesting to see if this model of mobile tv is going to be more successful than previous failed attempts such as FloTV