So farewell, BT Movio
Posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 9:51pm. #
So, the news is out. From the beginning of next year, BT Movio – the division of BT behind the Virgin Mobile Lobster phone’s “mobile TV with DAB” shown above, will cease broadcasting mobile TV.
The phone was expensive, large and clunky. The television was jerky and of poor quality. The DAB radio inside it was brilliant. The display of the (WorldDMB standard) electronic programme guide it used was revolutionary.
The pre-launch research had showed that their users spent -much- longer using the radio than the television; but Virgin Mobile decided to sell it by focusing on the TV channels – never once mentioning the excellent radio in any headline. Real users of this phone – which they’d bought for the television – ended up using the radio much more than TV too, in spite of a considerably beefed-up TV channel offering. As a phone-with-DAB-radio, it was a huge success.
The phone was also unique in DAB radios, since – apart from offering a fantastically easy-to-use Electronic Programme Guide – it also offered a ‘red button’; allowing broadcasters to offer additional functionality by linking to their own mobile websites. Unfortunately, broadcasters could never promote this functionality on the air or on other screens of the system, but it promised much.
This was the first radio to be able to display a decent electronic programme guide with full colour station logos, and its backchannel via the mobile network enabled interactivity. It could have displayed slideshow with a simple software update, as well as offering you the chance to record automatically straight from the EPG. Additional software which was planned even allowed you to purchase the track you were listening to, delivered over-the-air via DAB.
It was the only DAB radio I’ve seen that genuinely offered something over and above the user experience of FM. This was no wooden box with a slow scrolly screen; this was a device that, for radio, offered far more than you could ever get with analogue. It showed why DAB radio can offer so much and is so versatile.
It truly showed that DAB in mobile phones works. Consumers really want it. It offers so much more than analogue. And it works well in a mobile device. As a good implementation of a DAB radio inside a phone, it was a huge success. Other manufacturers should take note.
So, as a radio, it was a truly revolutionary product. The real shame was that both BT, and Virgin Mobile, believed it was a mobile television product – ignoring everything their research, and customers, and radio broadcasters, were telling them.
