Many of the conference sessions can be re-lived through downloadable MP3 recordings - take a look at www.ibcsessions.com.

Having installed the application and separately registered with the BBC website as requested, I tried to download my first pogramme.

However, when I came to play the programme, only the BBC’s ident trailer played.  The FAQ advised that this was probably due to a DRM error and that I needed to check that my PC had at least Windows Media 10 and Internet Explorer 6.  It also cryptically warned that some users may need Windows Media 11 and Internet Explorer 7.

It was at this point that I gave up: at that moment in time, I had other more pressing things to do than go hunting for and uploading software upgrades.

A few days later, I returned to the iPlayer and upgraded to IE7 - I already had Windows Media 11 having installed it some time previously while trying to overcome a problem syncing music between my PC and a Windows Mobile 5 mobile device – but that’s another story.

Having downloaded my chosen programme again, the iPlayer worked.

The issue here is that if PC based television and video consumption is to really take off it must work first time.  While I wouldn’t claim to be any sort of geek, I reakon I am more PC-savvy than the average Brit.  After my initial failure to make iPlayer work, I did come back to it some days later when I felt I had the time to get to the bottom of the issue.

But I suspect many thousands of others wouldn’t.

The other lesson for the BBC and other would-be television content distributors is that the PC is not a television.  Among PCs owned and used by the general public, no two PCs are the same: every one will have a unique combination of software installed.  This makes it a complex environment and expensive from a support perspective.

For the moment, the BBC makes it clear that iPlayer Beta is only compatible with Windows XP.  As it adds other OS, the support costs can only excalate, which creates another significant issue for a public service broadcaster that is already complaining that its latest license fee settlement is insufficient for it to sustain its existing broadcast remit.  As the Corporation continually reminds us, the BBC’s funding regime is unique and as such its activities are subject to close public and political scrutiny.  (A petition calling on the UK Prime Minister to prevent the BBC from restricting iPlayer to Windows users attracted more than 16,000 signatories.)

In the meantime, the Guardian, the Times, Silicon.Com and The Register are just some of the many and varied media that have reported the debate into the ability of the UK broadband infrastructure to satisfy the bandwidth demands of VOD services such as iPlayer.

Front-runner among the five biggest markets of the EU is Italy, where the first DVB-H mobile broadcast networks have heightened awareness of mobile TV. A little over a year after the services launched, just under 450,000 people – around one percent of all mobile users in Italy – already own a DVB-H capable handset. More than 31 percent of users with a DVB-H handset tuned in during June 2007 and over half of these did so at least once a week.

In contrast to services such as ringtones and game downloads, the market for mobile broadcast viewing is currently skewed towards young male users. The gender gap is quite pronounced – 70 percent of broadcast TV viewers are men and only 30 percent women – while 18-24 year old men are four times as likely to watch than older men. The number of female viewers is spread across all age groups more evenly.

Paul Goode, Senior Vice President and Senior Analyst will provide a more in-depth exploration of multimedia consumption in the opening Business Briefing presentation at IBC at 09.30 on Sunday 9th September.

The conference opens its doors at the RAI in Amsterdam on 6th September with the exhibition opening a day later on Friday 7th.  Mobile TV and IPTV are recurring themes throughout the event.

• Thursday’s opening day of the Conference focuses on Broadcasting by Broadband

• The Digital delivery: the essentials tutorial on Friday 7th September introduces the various technologies available to deliver multimedia content to consumers

• Shrinking world, growing markets, global business is the conference theme on Friday 7th September and explores the implications of fragmenting audiences for traditional broadcasters and the efforts of ISPs and telecommunications carriers to generate new revenue streams through the distribution of television and video content

• Mobile is a key thread throughout the Digital Lifestyles conference theme day on Saturday 8th September

• Technical paper sessions dedicated to IPTV (Thursday) and Multimedia delivery: anywhere anytime (Friday) will provide more in-depth coverage of some of the latest technological developments

• Dedicated Mobile and IPTV Zones have been established within the exhibition with live DVB-H and MediaFLO demonstration broadcasts available throughout the RAI

• I’ll be busy chairing the free-admission Business Briefings which provide opportunities for exhibitors from the Mobile and IPTV Zones to share their experiences of these emerging distribution platforms.

These revealed that 3 Italia had 719,000 customers using its DVB-H service out of a total subscriber base of 7.7 million.

(Hutch announcements can be confusing in that they often have more up-to-date subscriber figures interspersed with the data relating to the end of the accounting period: 3′s subscriber base at the end of June was 7.42 million.)

The great hope among mobile operators is that services like mobile TV will help in the fight against customer churn, and boost ARPU.  It was interesting to note that 3 Italia’s churn rate increased to 2.7% compared to 2.3% in the second half of 2006 while ARPU, on a trailing 12-month average basis, declined from €33.99 for the full year of 2006 to €31.54 although this was adversely impacted by regulatory changes relating to pre-pay customers.

Hutch also reported that the usage of non-voice services represented 32% of total ARPU, which remains above the market average for Italy.

HSDPA, which will extend opportunities to offer richer multimedia services, has now been rolled-out across 82% of the 3 Italia network.

In the four months since then, the mobile TV world has moved on quite dramatically.

In July, EU Commissioner for Informaton Society Viviene Reding, took the first step towards mandating DVB-H across the EU by announcing has intention to disignate it as an official European Standard.

Within a week, BT Movio announced that it would close its wholesale mobile TV proposition, delivered over DAB-IP, and retailed by Virgin Mobile in the UK.  The timing was interesting: was it purely coincidental or was Reding’s announcement seen as an opportunity to deflect media scrutiny from less than stella customer take-up?

On 10 August, MFD, which offers a T-DMB wholesale mobile broadcast service across parts of Germany, was reported to have formed a joint venture to roll-out a national DVB-H service.  (Alternatively, take a look at MFD’s own press release in German.)

While the European Commission is championing DVB-H in Europe, the standard’s future in the US looks a lot less certain following Crown Castle’s decision to lease its Modeo spectrum and abandon its own plans to deploy a national DVB-H network.

An update on the Korean mobile broadcast market can be found in Business Week (Aug 3).

Many distribution platforms are embraced within 3gTV.  And with hundreds of technology companies seeking to stake their claim in this exciting new world, these platforms are defined in a multitude of ways.    For example, the moniker “mobile TV” is used to describe mobile broadcast, streaming over 2.5/3G and sideloading to a mobile device from an internet-connected PC.

Similarly “IPTV” is used in many different ways.  The variety of definitions adopted by different players in the market has been vividly captured by Telecom TV, themselves an early entrant into the world of 3gTV.

In May 07 report, Opportunities in the mobile broadcast TV market, 2006-12, Datamonitor estimates the 4.4 million people were subscribing to mobile broadcast TV services at the end of 2006.  The firm forecasts that the global user base will grow to 156.6 million by 2012.

In 2012, Datamonitor estimates that Asia Pacific will be the biggest regional market with 76.3 million users followed by Europe with 42.7 million and North America with 34.6 million.

When it launched its online Mobile Media Intelligence Service in May, Screen Digest were forecasting 140 million users and revenues of €4.7 bn by 2011.

Then along came multichannel TV: more channel choice delivered over cable, satellite and more recently digital terrestrial broadcast.

Now we are entering television’s third generation: mulitple platforms – including the internet, IPTV and 3G mobile – are giving viewers additional choices and even greater control over when and where they consume TV-type content.

3gTV will monitor and report on these changes and their impact on both the broadcast and telecom sectors.