Mobile multimedia - Challenges and opportunities invited paper

Today, we observe the creation of an increasing number of multimedia consum er devices for mobile and home use. This includes set-top-boxes, game conso les, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), e-boob, but also mobile phones. Alt hough these devices have many things in common with desktop PCs - above all Internet access - it is widely accepted that they will serve a different p urpose. Many committees and companies are curently trying to define the ope n application platform for tomorrow's consumer terminals for home use, amon g others the so-called Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) of the European Digit al Video Broadcasting (DVB) project. Meanwhile, on the cellular end of the multimedia business, portable appliances like cellular phones, e-books and PDAs are evolving to multimedia terminals, starting from narrow band Intern et services like the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and slowly adoptin g video technologies. One of the main obstacles to overcome is bandwidth li mitation - even for 3G mobile systems - and broadcast technology is conside red to be a serious candidate to fill this gap, both for Ty and data servic es. A special challenge is to provide multimedia services in vehicles, wher e, due to the static environment relative to the driver, some requirements for mobile and static terminals apply at the same time. This paper shall su mmarize some trends and opportunities of mobile multimedia - especially in the DVB and GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) domain, while out lining the different requirements for mobile, home, and car use of multimed ia services.