Portable TV could be observed on a good or 3G cell phone, like the LG Vu or Samsung SCH u620 clever phone. Both AT&T Instant and Verizon Instant present portable TV services. For Verizon, it's VCAST TV and for AT&T, it's AT&T Portable TV. Both AT&T and Verizon Portable TV use MediaFLO systems from Qualcomm to transmitted the VHF (719 MHz Center frequency) digital TV signals to the portable phones. Portable TV company from different provider bunch different pair of TV programs in its transmitted (in the range of 10 to 12 TV programs in a fundamental package).

Portable TV company does not utilize the cell phone network to transfer the TV signals. Alternatively, it works on the split network to spread, transfer and transmitted the TV signals to the portable phones. It just uses the cell phone network to provide interactivity and consumer authorization with the TV company provider. Considering that the Smart IPTV 3G cell phone network from AT&T and Verizon are both able to transport IP traffic, it appears to be evident that the easiest implementation for portable TV is using IPTV. An example is AT&T presently using IPTV in its U-verse company (internet, phone and TV).

To understand why portable TV does not use IPTV, the unicast nature of the cell phone network must be explained. The present 3G (UMTS, EVDO) cell phone network are made to hold unicast traffic just, i.e. point out position relationship must be identify between an individual and the Media server in order for the network to deliver the TV traffic to the portable phone. Since TV is really a transmitted company, i.e. an indicate multipoint relationship is needed for portable TV service. To apply point out multipoint relationship, the cell phone network wants to setup an IP relationship between the Media server and each portable consumer obtaining the transmitted simultaneously. These many associations can simply overrun the capability of the cell phone network and prevents other voice and information traffic that really needs to utilize the network.

For portable TV to use IPTV, the IP multicast function must be implemented on the cell phone network. Multicasting may be the technique of sending an individual video indicate concurrently to multiple conclusion users. All people get exactly the same indicate at once but you can find number split channels (connections) for each recipient. IP multicast is widely used in the supply of transmitted TV services around IP networks. It considerably reduces the total amount of bandwidth needed to transfer top quality IPTV content across a network. The reason being merely a simple duplicate of each and every video supply must be provided for a switch, which makes a duplicate of this supply for the seeking devices. Not merely does multicast reduce the bandwidth demands of the network but the processing power of the Media server can also be kept relatively minimal since it just directs one duplicate of an IPTV supply at a time.

While the present 3G portable network from AT&T and Verizon does not need IP multicast, nevertheless, the next 3G portable network update from both companies might are the IP multicast feature. For AT&T Instant, the next network update will undoubtedly be HSPA (High Rate Package Access) which supports the MBMS (Multimedia Transmitted Multicast Services) feature. For Verizon Instant, the next update will undoubtedly be EVDO Rev A which supports the BCMCS (Broadcast and Multicast Services) feature. Ergo, the future portable TV company from both AT&T Instant and Verizon Instant might use IPTV implementation.