So today is the last day of the IFA 2005. The presenting manufacturers are apparently happy with the amount of orders they got from retailers. For me the number of new product announcements were limited. But I feel this way after each consumer electronics show.

The big topics in the mainstream press were HDTV (still...) and TV on handheld devices (mhm...). Funny enough that those two topics have been surrounded by lots of controversy in Germany.

HDTV manufacturers for instance blamed TV stations to not quickly enough roll-out HDTV broadcasting. The first HD broadcast in Germany will be a Soccer game on a private Pay TV channel this November. It will only be via satellite. Of course the TV stations blame the manufactures that they just want to sell stuff (really?).

Everybody seems to be excited about watching TV on mobile phones. The idea is to fully launch it in Germany just in time for the Soccer World Cup 2006. Only problem: it might not be ready by then. There are legal issues, infrastructure is not there yet and the license deals are not in place. On top of that there is still a standards discussion. DVB-H versus DMB. DVB-H does not have standards yet for interactivity. DMB, which is already in use in Korea for quite some time is ready, but the German companies seem not to be very eager to let Samsung and Co. take over the German Mobile TV market.
Bottom line, the Consumer has to wait. More details on this topic in this report on Heise (German). To get the full IFA 2005 experience try to watch some of the 27 HD videos Charbax made available here via bitTorrent. He was filming with the new Sony Sony HDR-HC1 HDV camera.

See all IFA 2005 coverage that appeared on I4U News.