KDDI of Japan is teaming up with TV Asahi to jointly develop TV programming services for mobile phones and broadcast TV, as well as a terrestrial digital broadcasting 1-SEG service. The two companies have been holding trials of terrestrial digital broadcasting and now plan to take advantage of 1-SEG broadcasting to: develop sales promotions and awareness of the technology; to develop TV and online shopping; to verify the feasibility of developing online content linked to TV Asahi programmes; and to implement a trial service connecting the 1-SEG service broadcast by TV Asahi to the various EZweb services offered by KDDI.
1-SEG is a mobile terrestrial digital audio/video broadcasting service in Japan that is due to launch on 1 April 2006. Terrestrial digital broadcast in Japan (ISDB-T) is designed so that each channel is divided into 13 segments. HDTV content occupies 12 segments, and the remaining channel is used for mobile receivers. Hence the name, ‘1-SEG’. The broadcasts use H.264 video and AAC audio encapsulated in MPEG2 Transport Stream. Maximum video resolution is 320×240 pixels, and maximum video bitrate is 128kbps.