According to Ars Technica, a former NBC News vice president wants the US government to require all cell phones to have a TV tuner, to receive emergency broadcasts when a disaster brings down the phone network.

It's worth reading the comments on the article. Obviously, an FM/AM radio would make more sense, being cheaper and needing less battery power, and TV pictures being of dubious value on a phone screen anyway. However, it's nice to see them thinking about disaster communications. Some of the comments talk about alternative systems, and some recount experiences of TV during hurricanes.

Well, I guess they would have to get me a cell phone first for me to benefit from this retarded idea designed to sell more advertising for the faltering over the air networks.

"But officer, I wasn't texting, I was watching Katie/Diane/Brian on the evening news!"

I have a radio, it works fine. Waste of money if you ask me.

While I do agree that, at least in the US, local TV often has better and more timely news coverage than local radio stations, you have to wonder at least a little about the conflict of interest--a former TV executive wanting every cell phone to have TV.

Maybe it's different in tornado or hurricane prone areas, but I have long been disappointed here in California by the total lack of use of the NOAA All-hazards radio network for anything beyond weather forecasts/warnings. The technology already exists for timely and geographically relevant broadcasts by using NOAA's SAME technology, but it's pretty wasted here, it seems.

An interesting idea that has been around a while is building in some sort of "mesh networking" ability in all cell phones for sending/receiving text messages during emergencies. If a cell tower signal is not available, the phone goes into a store-forward mode to pass the message to another nearby cell phone user in an ad hoc arrangement. I'm sure that there are algorithms out there that would optimize the forwarding "direction" but the point is that the message would get passed phone-to-phone until a cell tower is finally reached. Obviously, there are issues like battery life or what happens when you have a stadium full of people when the power goes out and their phones are madly passing messages amongst each other, but I'm sure it could be worked around.

"...this retarded idea designed to sell more advertising for the faltering over the air networks."

Hey, guess what?

"Multiple patents have been awarded Wolzien (starting with 5,761,606) for his interactive television inventions linking mass media and the web. He continues as an active inventor."
http://www.wolzien.net/3.html

Think there might be a connection?

Sue

Great idea, brilliant, instead of being run off the road by some airhead debating J-Lo's hair color or sexting we can throw in a bunch of people driving while watching Glen Beck Vap-o-rub himself into a ranting/crying fit. Fleeing suspects could catch themselves on TV and mug for the cameras. You could watch and be in an episode of "COPs" in real time. Sort of an the full immersion video game experience. Yes, that will certainly make the roads safer.

Well, at least everyone will have something to do while waiting for the EMTs to arrive.

Instead of TV, or even normal radio, how about a EBS, Emergency Broadcast System, or NWS, National Weather System, alert receiver. I'm not saying it is a good idea but emergency alert activation is a established technology and, free of commercial and personal use, could provide some useful information.

No, radio does not make more sense to a TV executive.

I think my cell-phone already has FM reception capability though I've never tried it.

My phone has FM; it's part of the reason I upgraded. I'm not going to carry a separate radio but I do take my phone everywhere. Unfortunately you also need to carry headphones because it uses the lead as an aerial.

To me it would be really nice if my cell phone also had:

am/fm receiver
NOAA receiver
flashlight

Some cell phones come with an LED that can be used as a flash for taking pictures, but it seems like no one thought that same LED might be useful as a light.

More than once I have used the back light on my cell phone as a flashlight. Its not a good substitute but it is something.

I suspect the main reason cell phones don't have am/fm is because it would detract from the services the cell companies charge you $5 a month each for.

With digital TV one would think it would not be real hard to add a digital TV receiver to a standard cell phone, but I am not real sure how many people would find it useful on such a small screen.

My old sony ericsson w810 had exactly that... very handy (although I always have flashlights nearby). It had a FM radio, too. Too bad I killed it bashing around in the snow with a non-sealed hip holster and then making phone calls with wet gloves...

IMO, a web browser is a very useful feature for the phone. Lots of services have a version tailored for display on small cell phones. Lots of resources have been pouring into making those small web browsers capable of digesting "big screen" stuff and display it in a manner readable at a small screen, but the size limitations are hard to come around.

TV? I've heard it is a big hit in Japan. Me, I couldn't care less ... I've got FM radio and a web browser. I'm happy with that.

Implementing digital or even analogue UHF or VHF TV on a mobile telephone handset would be quite challenging anyway because of the antenna design problem. Simple dipole or unipole antenna's are poor performers and would need line of sight to the UHF transmitting antenna, this is why hi gain Yagi directional antenna's are employed for good TV reception especially for Digital transmissions which suffer from the cliff or brickwall effect. High gain low noise GaAs MESFET UHF amplifiers could boost signal strengths to useful levels but these are still very expensive. Even the US Digital TV ATSC standard does not have mobile devices as part of its specification. Moving over to the European DVB-T2 and DVB-H standard would be extremely expensive to implement when the ATSC standard has just been implemented. Having mobile TV broadcasts in the US sounds like a nice idea but would be just too difficult/costly to implement. If you want mobile Digital TV from terrestrial then you are going to have to lug around a Yagi antenna, high gain low noise preamp, power supply and a compass so that you know which direction to point the Yagi. Thats why you don't see digital broadcast TV already on mobile phones, simply because the form factor and power requirements are unfeasible for a mobile telephone handset.

I wouldn't mind a Mobile phone handset with DAB Digital Radio receiver built in though along with a built in WiFi 3G Access point (so I can watch and listen to hundreds of IPTV and Internet Radio stations on my Archos player).