The company is demonstrating an application called PocketCaster at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas this week. PocketCaster currently works over 3G networks, but will soon – if all goes well - broadcast DVB-H video as well. To that end, ComVu is working with DVB-H specialist Modeo and that company's DVB-H-capable (HTC-built) Pocket PC Phone, first introduced at CTIA 2006 earlier in the month.

Currently, ComVu says PocketCaster's live video streams from select Windows Mobile 5.0-based camera phones over 3G networks to one to few thousand simultaneous viewers via a free beta service. When ComVu launches its fee-based services later this year, there will still be some level of free videocasting offered as well, the company says.

With DVB-H, however, the number of potential viewers a user can stream video to grows significantly. ComVu CEO William Mutual says the company "will enable the ultimate distribution solution for citizen-powered journalism and user-generated content with immediate reach by next year to an audience in the tens of millions worldwide."

Hey, if you're lucky, you'll get American Idol numbers for you're live on-the-spot handset reporting.

Modeo successfully pilot tested its DVB-H mobile broadcast network in Pittsburgh (where it is headquartered) last year. It plans to officially launch service in select major U.S. markets, including New York City, later this year. Nationwide deployment, in the top 30 U.S. markets, is targeted throughout 2007.

ComVu's DVB-H offering requires DVB-H networks like Modeo's to launch, of course

DVB-H is one of several digital TV standards on the road to market (Qualcomm's MediFlo is the most notable of the others). Standards like DVB-H propose broadcasting television signals separately from traditional cellular-data networks. This frees up bandwidth for other mobile operator content and promises better quality video to the consumer.

Research group Informa Telecoms & Media believes that there will be 74 million DVB-H subscribers by 2010, more than 50 percent of all mobile TV handset sales.

More on Modeo Handset
The Modeo Pocket PC Phone isn’t due to ship until the second half of the year. We got a chance to handle one while it was receiving television signals from an adhoc DVB-H network at CTIA. The quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE smartphone measures 4.1 x 2.2 x 0.6 inches and weighs 4.23 ounces. It has a Texas Instruments OMAP850 200 MHz CPU, 64 MB of ROM, 64MB of RAM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a microSD card slot (for up to 1 GB of extra storage), and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

It is one of the first handsets to integrate NVIDIA's new high performance Go-Force 5500 handheld graphics processing unit, which runs at such a low wattage, when I touched one running full throttle at the CTIA, I barely felt any heat at all. The graphics engine operates a 2.2-inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixel), 64K-color TFT display at up to 30 fps. Modeo says the smartphone's 1150 mAH lithium-ion battery provides up to three hours of TV viewing, four hours of talk time or six days of standby time.

An electronic service guide (ESG) created by Penthera Technologies provides access to free, subscription, pay-per-view and other protected content with an approach familiar to anyone who has used a cable or satellite TV service.

Modeo heavily integrates Microsoft technologies, not just the operating system. The phone receives and plays Modeo DVB-H mobile broadcasts delivered using Windows Media Video and Windows Media Digital Rights Management. Modeo also uses Windows Media Player 10 Mobile to playback video and music stored in multiple formats onboard in the WMA MP3 and AAC formats.