Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "The Rise of the ATSC M/H Machines: The Battle for American Mobile TV" report to their offering.

This report suggests that there might be XYZ million devices which will be enabled to pick up the new Mobile Digital TV services in the US by the end of 2014, about five years from today.

We are talking purely about the signals which are delivered over the ATSC M/H protocols, set up for local TV transmitter sites to add a mobile TV channel to existing SD and HD signals.

The overall picture for mobile TV in the US is bound to be more complex than that. Initially we see ATSC M/H and its compelling economics, cheap to deploy at the broadcast level, with a free to air business model, being the only mobile TV service which attracts Americans. Once US users develop their own habits and preferences in mobile viewing one that includes broadcast material, as well as existing downloaded and streamed services available today then other services may find some favor, such as Qualcomms FLO TV service, which plans to offer a lot of live sport.

However most of the sport it is offering is planned to come from existing local and national broadcast TV services, which are free to air anyway, and we dont believe it will have a significant viewing edge over free to air broadcast mobile TV services for some considerable time to come. At some future distant point, we can see broadcast video vying with streamed services, and paid Mediaflo services and possible one or two others video delivery mechanisms, including those using broadcast cellular technologies such as IMB (Integrated Mobile Broadcast), and satellite radio proprietary delivery.

But ATSC M/H will enjoy dominance for some years to come and be robust against onslaughts from all comers throughout the next decade.

But even ATSC M/H has some obstacles to overcome before it hits the mainstream, which is why we see new sources of ATSC M/H chipsets coming into play in Summer 2010 through to early 2011; we see a gradually increasing number of device types and devices emerging; but the first vital step, that of their being at least one declared plan to offer a nationwide footprint of ATSC M/H programming happening within 9 months. Finally this will all lead to one of the cellular operators openly supporting ATSC M/H handsets.

During its first year of operation, 2010, ATSC M/H will acquire only 5.9 million customers, however once one major operator supports and benefits from ATSC M/H, others will follow, and once a nationwide network of stations appears, and consumers begin to understand what is on offer, and when Net-book and Smartbook devices begin to arrive with ATSC M/H connectivity onboard, then devices which can accept ATSC M/H will leapfrog to ABC million in one short year by the end of 201l. It will then continue to accelerate to 2014 when it will reach XYZ million devices in the US.

It is very hard to see how ATSC M/H, also known as Mobile Digital TV (Which we shall call MoDTV throughout this report) will take off in the US, given the number of obstacles in its way. On the one hand it probably needs the backing of one of the major US broadcast networks and at least one of the major cellular operators. In fact it needs so many things to happen in order for it to flourish, that quite simply, if these do not happen in time, then other means of bringing video to the handset could emerge, and dominate, but we dont expect that to happen.

It needs to be understood that at present there is a very clear pattern in video consumption, and thats the fact that there needs to be a service where people can sample new programming and this is the role which has been played by broadcasting for the past 50 years. There is increasingly another, more selective way of viewing, either using a physical storage disk, a DVR or VoD service, where you have a clear idea of what you want to watch and arrange to have the video on your particular device.

In mobile this two part process may repeat, but it doesnt have to. If it does repeat there will be at least two ways of getting video on a handset, one which plays out to a schedule, like broadcasting, even if it turns out to be a streamed cellular broadcast signal, and one source of as much video as possible to be selectively played, like VoD streaming.

However we have to be aware that there is no absolute need for broadcasting to a handset. It could be that we develop our viewing likes and dislikes by sampling or zapping existing free to air TV channels, and once we know which series we like, we may ONLY view VoD on mobile and portable viewing services. Streaming enthusiasts have been saying this will be the outcome for years, but we feel it is unsupportable, because of potential network congestion.

Also there is significant evidence, for instance from Japan and Korea, that consumers really like, initially at least, to be confident that the TV on their televisions is the same TV, including the same programming, scheduled at the same time as their home TV sets.

It might make absolute sense, in the long run, for programming on a portable device to be mostly catch up TV, delayed either 8 or 12 hours from the prime time of the night before. This has so far NOT been tried in Japan or Korea, and with almost 70 million Japanese users of 1-Seg TV already, it makes sense for US broadcasters not to deviate too much from the success factors which drove consumers in Japan to take up broadcast mobile digital TV (MoDTV). So for now, the Holy Grail of mobile TV must be shifting existing free to air TV models to portable devices, especially handsets.

In order to achieve that, and to create a vibrant MoDTV community we would need an ecosystem where there were multiple sources of ATSC M/H chipsets, multiple devices including handsets, nationwide programming availability, with at least one TV channel in ATSC M/H and one of the cellular operators openly acquiring and probably subsidizing ATSC M/H handsets.

While not all of these things may remain essential, its clear that if ALL of them were in place, there would be customers tomorrow, but because they are not all in place, there is a feeling that the success or failure of ATSC M/H is too close to call, and at least some of these things need to happen during 2010, or at the latest early 2011, in order for ATSC M/H to happen with anything like the success ISDB-T has enjoyed and still enjoys in Japan.