First steps of mobile digital television:State of the art and first user impressions

In the MobTV research and development project VTT Information Technology andits partners are developing a prototype for mobile digital television. This meansthat a person can watch digital television broadcasts from a small portable devicewhenever he wants and wherever he is. In the MobTV research project the use oftwo different sizes of portable devices is explored: PDA (Compaq) and a portablecomputer (Fujitsu).The Human Centred Design approach is used in this project. This means thatthe potential end-users participate in the development and evaluation from the very beginning of the project.This research report first reviews briefly what is happening in the field ofmobile digital television. Then it reviews recent studies on the usability of mobiledevices and studies related to digital television. Some evaluation and researchmethods used in previous studies are also covered. After an overview of relatedwork, the report presents research questions, methods and results of the firstconsumer interviews concerning mobile digital television in Finland. The purposeof the interviews was to find out peoples’ attitudes to and first impressions ofmobile digital television.Altogether 29 interviews were held at the end of summer 2001. Theinterviewees watched recorded TV programs on devices of two different sizes: aPDA and a portable computer. The interviews were conducted in different places,e.g. schools, stations and trains. Most of the interviewees reacted positively tomobile television. Still, at this point people feel that mobile television should beintegrated into some other device or service. That way mobile television would bemore easily accepted. TV programs suitable for small screens are different fromthose suitable for bigger screens. In every interview setting, people said they would most likely watch the news on mobile television. The schools were very exited about the possibilities that mobile digital television would bring, but at the same time they were worried about the costs