Nokia today announced its latest Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) broadcast mobile TV pilot with India's national television broadcaster Doordarshan, using Nokia's open standards based DVB-H solution.

During this pilot, Doordarshan will test the reception quality of the broadcast coverage, and explore the myriad of options of supporting different service schemes, such as advertising and interactive services. The pilot will also enable Doordarshan to gauge consumer expectations of the service going forward.

The pilot will use DVB-H technology, a robust broadcast technology now used to support several extensive field pilots globally, chosen based on its merit to support mobility, small screens, indoor coverage, optimised use of battery and in-built antenna that are specific to handheld devices such as mobile devices.

As the national television broadcaster of India, Doordarshan runs the largest Free to Air Satellite (DTH) services covering the entire country. Its analog territory broadcast network covers more than 92% of India providing free news, sports and entertainment.

Mobile TV broadcasting allows the user to watch their favourite TV programmes such as dramas, news, music, sports and documentaries on their mobile device. The service works by receiving a digital TV broadcast signal optimized for mobile devices from the air in much the same way as televisions at home do.  Channel guides will also be broadcast allowing users to keep abreast of the latest programmes on air. Broadcast mobile TV is not the same as a streaming video service over 3G or GPRS where each recipient gets a separate copy of the program stream. Rather, one simultaneous TV stream can be received at any time by any number of users enjoying high picture quality and low battery power consumption.