was a mobile

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

digital audio/video subscription based

broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...

service in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, whose services began on October 20, 2004 and ended on March 31, 2009 at 3:00 pm Japan time. MobaHO! used the

ISDB Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB; Japanese: , ''Tōgō dejitaru hōsō sābisu'') is a Japanese broadcasting standard for digital television (DTV) and digital radio. ISDB supersedes both the NTSC-J analog television system and ...

digital broadcast specification. The satellite, MBSat 1, providing this service was jointly owned by

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd. ( or ) is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 percent share as of 2008. ...

of South Korea and Mobile Broadcasting Corporation (MBCO) of Japan; TU, South Korea's now defunct

S-DMB S-DMB (Satellite-DMB) was a hybrid version of the Digital Multimedia Broadcasting. The S-DMB used the S band (2170-2200 MHz) of IMT-2000. and delivered around 18 channels at 128 kbit/s in 15 MHz. It incorporated a high power geostati ...

mobile television service under SK Telecom, used to share same satellite. A number of receivers were available for this service: portable receivers with built-in QVGA LCD screens, car-use, a laptop-use

PC card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and devel ...

receiver, a mobile phone (by DoCoMo) and more.

Satellite

The service used the MBSat 1 (Mobile Broadcasting Satellite, also known as Hanbyul, COSPAR 2004-007A) satellite. The satellite was a joint venture of SK Telecom of South Korea and Mobile Broadcasting Corporation of Japan. The satellite was launched 13.03.2004 on an Atlas IIIA rocket. It was a Geostationary orbit (GEO) satellite, located at 120 degrees West. The broadcasting of the satellite ceased 31 March 2009. After the bankruptcy of MobaHO!, the satellite was sold to Asia Broadcasting Satellite (ABS) of China in 2013 and moved to 75 degrees East and renamed ABS 2i. Later it was named ABS 4 (Mobisat).

Technical information

This service used ISO MPEG-4 Version 1 Simple Profile @ L3 video and AAC audio encapsulated in

MPEG transport stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast syste ...

. The maximum supported resolution was 320x240 pixels (QVGA), and the maximum video bitrate was 384 kbit/s at a frame rate of 15 frames per second. Audio conformed to the ISO/IEC 13818-7 AAC LC (Low Complexity) profile, with maximum bitrate of 144 kbit/s and sampling rates up to 48 kHz. The transmission was scrambled using the

MULTI2 MULTI2 is a block cipher, developed by Hitachi in 1988. Designed for general-purpose cryptography, its current use is encryption of high-definition television broadcasts in Japan. Cipher details MULTI2 is a symmetric key algorithm with variabl ...

cipher for conditional access. This service was broadcast over 2.6 GHz

S-band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave radio band, band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequency, frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it c ...

by MBSat at 144.0°E. Left Circular polarized beam covered Japan, while Right Circular polarized beam covered South Korea. These beams were intended to be received by portable devices with omni-directional antennas. A single 150 W

Ku band The Ku band () is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies from 12 to 18 gigahertz (GHz). The symbol is short for "K-under" (originally german: Kurz-unten), because it is the lower part of the or ...

transponder on MBSat, operated at 12.226 GHz and

Symbol rate In a digitally modulated signal or a line code, symbol rate, modulation rate or baud rate is the number of symbol changes, waveform changes, or signaling events across the transmission medium per unit of time. The symbol rate is measured in ' ...

of 18433 was used to broadcast identical contents to "Gap-fillers" (re-transmission devices) which were planned to be installed in train stations and subways, and other areas where the S-band satellite beam would not reach. This repeater broadcast was also scrambled using MULTI2.

Financial issues

The company had expected to attract a million subscribers by 2008, but had only reached about a hundred thousand. The company ceased operations on March 31, 2009.

Receiver devices

MTV-S10 by Toshiba, 4E-MB1 by SHARP, MBR0101B by MBCO, MBT0102A by MBCO -

type. This was the only device which allowed recording broadcasts. However, DRM technology was used to prohibit playback of recorded content without the receiver card present. Hardware encryption chip and presumably receiver serial number was used to encrypt the recording. * Mobile phone: Music Porter X by DoCoMo * and more

Program Channels

Most MobaHO! music channels were produced in-house and featured popular genre in the Japanese and Korean languages for their respective markets. They also carried several commercial and non-commercial FM stations from the west coast of the United States for English language, American Pop, Hip-Hop, Jazz, and various forms of old and new Rock. Toward the end, they also carried New York City's WQXR, America's highest rated Classical music station, then owned by the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

. With a licensed bandwidth equal to that of both Sirius and XM, MobaHO! was able to offer approximately thirty predominantly music, audio channels plus seven video channels, including news, horse racing, and family and children's programming.

References