Toshiba and Sharp have just announced the world’s first hand-held audio-video players designed to receive digital multimedia broadcast by satellite!
The satellite broadcast provider will be Tokyo’s Mobile Broadcast Corporation. MBS will start beaming digital multimedia content on October 20th 2004 from its MBSAT S-band satellite operating in the the 2.6GHz band and in synchronous orbit over Japan (well, actually over the equator, and aimed at Japan).
MBSAT’s “&12514;&12496; HO!” service, as it is called, (don’t ask me to pronounce that), will offer a number of satellite video, music, data and specialty channels at a variety of subscription prices and hopes to attract 20M customers in Japan. MBSAT coverage will practically anywhere in Japan including cars, buildings, public transportation as well as airplanes. Gaps in coverage will be filled by land-based retransmission stations.
Sharp’s satellite AV receiver, model 4E-MB1, has already been announced and is shown below.
The 4E-MB1 unit itself has a 320×240 pixel LCD screen and supports JPEG, MPEG4, XMDFand MP3 formats, not to mention the satellite antenna.
The Toshiba MTV-S10 pictured below is another satellite AV receiver. The Toshiba model has not been announced yet, but is expected to have a similar spec set and price point.
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Whatever became of satellite AV receivers? How high did their sales top out at?