Race for the mobile TV audience

The battle for TV viewers is set to move to a new level with a BBC plan to allow mobile phone users to watch video clips - and possibly whole programmes - on a large scale. Under the initiative, people will also be able to use their mobile phones to schedule their television sets and PCs to record BBC shows.

The BBC says its three-phase "appointment to view" plan for mobiles will begin in the next two months and should climax at the end of 2005 with the ability to use a mobile phone to record TV shows either by using it to programme a personal video recorder (PVR) or an interactive media player (IMP) on a PC.

In the US people can already programme Tivo PVRs remotely over the internet. In the UK, Sky is developing a way for subscribers to remotely schedule their Sky+ PVRs to record, either over the internet or via a phone text message

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