Technofile Mike ButcherNot content with creating the "car-crash" genre that is reality TV, media executives and mobile phone companies are ganging up to bring TV to the one device that has become the realm in which the user, not the broadcaster, is king - the mobile phone.
This might well herald a new era in technology - or it might prove to be the ultimate turn-off. For despite the wisecracks about unprogrammable video recorders and indecipherable instructions, at its best technology is about making something that is tailored to the person.
Mobile phones and MP3 players are now highly customisable, with everything from favourite playlists to personalised wallpapers. Personalisation is now big business in the tech world.
However, you, gentle reader, are about to be flanked in a pincer movement of mobile companies and TV firms.
On the right we have the mobile handset makers starting to produce models which can receive TV broadcasts. On the left, TV companies eager to recapture the young, lost to mobiles, games and the net.
In the middle are mobile operators, keen to recoup the millions they spent on 3G by offering new "sexy" services like video.
The latest firm to step up to the plate is Nokia. Last week it announced plans to launch a number of new multimedia handsets. The N71, N80 and N92 really do pack in the bells and whistles, including digital camera, MP3 player, digital TV broadcasts and internet access.
The new N71 offers internet connectivity via 3G or Bluetooth wireless and a two megapixel camera with support for video sharing. It also supports visual radio, a new broadcast technology designed to display interactive information accompanying radio broadcasts.
The N80 handset (retailing at about €499) offers 3G, Wi-Fi ... (wireless fidelity), EDGE (enhanced data GSM, environment) and GSM (global systems mobile connectivity), a three megapixel camera and the ability to play MPEG-4 (moving picture experts group) video to your TV.
But perhaps the most interesting model is the N92, which doubles as a portable mini television. Bristling with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it's also one of the first ever mobiles to feature DVB-H (digital video broadcasting-handheld) for watching broadcast television.
Suddenly the mobile phone is also a real TV, with the ability to create personal channel lists and subscribe to various TV packages. With a 2.8-inch anti-glare QVGA screen (quarter video graphics array) with 16 million colours, the N92 also has a two megapixel camera, stereo speakers, FM radio, MP3 player and up to 2GB storage capacity.
Costing about €600, the N92 will be in the shops after New Year. Nokia executives have been claiming it's the first device to bring together mobile and TV - rather forgetting those quaint portable LCD TVs (liquid crystal display television) which have largely failed to take off in the last 20 years. And this is the point. Research among 1,500 UK consumers, issued only this week from legal firm Olswang, shows that there is little interest among consumers for watching television on their mobile phones.
Less than one in five of those surveyed said they wanted to watch TV on their mobile, while 70 per cent said they definitely did not want to watch TV on the go. Of those who warmed to the idea, more than half preferred to watch music videos and 40 per cent wanted news and sport. In other words, mobile users prefer their soaps on the sofa.
More than half of those questioned said they would prefer to watch TV when it suited them, exploding the myth that they would watch live broadcast TV.
They would much prefer to download shows and watch them whenever it suited them.
In other words, so much for Nokia and other companies' plans to convert us into roving square eyes.
Increasingly, the evidence on the ground shows that consumers want much more control over their media consumption.
The push to bring the broadcast world on to the mobile looks like it could be the ultimate turn-off.
