Much like TD-SCDMA, China's looking to impress the world (or something) with its totally homegrown, totally proprietary, totally unused anywhere else "standard" for mobile TV in time for the Beijing Olympics. CMMB, as its known, is the protocol of choice for trials that have kicked off this month in Beijing and Shenzen (with Shanghai following on shortly), offering seven channels via a USB dongle. Portable media players and phones that offer CMMB compatibility should be available before too long, and by the time the Games kick off, the government body responsible for the build-out expects 37 cities to be online. We'd like to rail on it even harder, but let's be honest, it's not any more one-off than MediaFLO, now is it?

[Via IntoMobile]

Just as it's doing with its nascent 3G network, China's forging ahead with a bunch of no-name, homegrown protocols duking it out for the title of National Mobile TV Standard, a fight that's waging deep within the halls of the country's Standardization Administration. CMMB, DMB-TH, T-MMB, CMB, and CDMB -- five "standards" we'll bet a wooden nickel you've never heard of -- are all in the running, although it seems that a rogue dissenter has gone ahead and sped up the process just a bit. China's SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television) is flatly ignoring the standardization process and starting a CMMB build-out already, promising availability in 37 cities via terrestrial networks while the planned July launch of the CMMB-STAR satellite will deliver broadcasts to a total of 324. It seems a wide variety of manufacturers are already on board and the SARFT has started producing CMMB-ready content, so yeah, you can just go ahead and wrap up this whole dog and pony show you call a standards selection process, k?

[Via mocoNews]