MobaHO! (モバHO!) was a mobile satellite digital audio/video subscription based broadcasting service in Japan, whose services began on 20 October 2004 and ended on March 31, 2009 at 3:00 pm Japan time. MobaHO! used the ISDB digital broadcast specification. The satellite, MBSat 1, providing this service is jointly owned by SK Telecom of Korea and Mobile Broadcasting Corporation (MBCO) of Japan.
Contents
A number of receivers were available for this service: portable receivers with built-in QVGA LCD screens, car-use, a laptop-use PC card receiver, a mobile phone (by DoCoMo) and more.
Technical information
This service used ISO MPEG-4 Version 1 Simple Profile @ L3 video and AAC audio encapsulated in MPEG transport stream. 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 cipher for conditional access.
This service was broadcast over 2.6 GHz S-band 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 transponder on MBSat, operated at 12.226 GHz and Symbol rate 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. They ceased operations on March 31, 2009.
Receiver devices
MTV-S10 by Toshiba, 4E-MB1 by SHARP, MBR0101B by MBCO, MBT0102A by MBCO - PC card 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.
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.
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.