Mobile digital television: Coming to a (small) screen near you

Mobile digital television as we’ll come to know it -- live broadcasts, designed for the smaller screen, and most important, free -- is step-by-step getting closer to becoming a reality.

There are a plethora of questions surrounding mobile digital TV. The biggest is simply whether it will succeed, the success of a free ad-based service depending entirely on widespread adoption -- the network TV model gone mobile. Another question is whether it will reshuffle the landscape of existing services, crippling subscription-based models (like Flo TV and Hulu, if it goes down that path, as rumored). 

Mobile digital TV is being promoted by the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), a group of more than 900 local broadcast TV stations. It aims to create a mobile digital TV standard to allow and provide live and on-demand video broadcasts.

The technology would allow wireless devices to pick up over-the-air local TV broadcasts, even when users are on moving trains, cars and buses. Mobile digital TV already exists in test markets such as Chicago and Washington -- and is already popular in Japan and South Korea -- and may soon be coming to a city near you.