(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) For a handful of viewers, the World Cup this month will be played out not in huge stadiums but on the tiny screens of their cell phones. Texas Instruments Inc. and some partners will broadcast live soccer games to mobile phones in a demonstration in New York and Munich, Germany.

Their hope: That the high-quality digital broadcasts will stir up more interest in mobile television, particularly for handsets that use chips made by TI.

"The advantage is having it in your purse or pocket and being able to see it anywhere," TI spokeswoman Gail Chandler said.

"Once people see it, I think there will be a tremendous amount of interest."

Ready or not, many wireless phone users worldwide will get the opportunity in the next few years to buy television service on mobile phones.

Companies are investing billions of dollars in networks, programming and phone technology for the prospect of many more billions in profits.

In Italy and Germany, operators are rolling out mobile TV networks in time for the World Cup, which started last week with matches in Munich and Gelsenkirchen and will offer games in a dozen German cities before the July 9 final in Berlin.

A number of trials of mobile video have been under way elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

Qualcomm Corp., which offers a technology standard different from the one TI has embraced, showed off its TV channels in April as the wireless industry gathered in Las Vegas for its annual convention.

A competitor is starting its own digital video system in the same city.

But the tremendous interest and investment in mobile video are accompanied by a like amount of uncertainty about what consumers want and will pay for. Among the unknowns:

_Should the video signal be transmitted on a separate network or through a cellular phone company's network?

_Do consumers want to download clips on demand or watch live TV?

_Will they watch the same content they watch on full-size TVs from networks and cable companies, or will it have to be specially made for little screens?

Wireless industry consultant Andrew Seybold said that companies probably will find out what works only by finding out what doesn't.

"There is no market research for what's going forward," he said. "So what we're going to do is we're going to put stuff in the market. We're going to see who buys it. We're going to see who uses it."

After that, "we're going to refine it," he said.

"We're going to put it out in the market place in a different form. That's the way this industry is going to evolve. That's the way it's always evolved."

A good way to start an argument among mobile TV adherents is to ask a very basic question: How will the signal get to the mobile phone?

Many users can already get video on their mobile phones, through programming carried by their cellular phone companies.

Verizon Wireless offers VCast, Sprint has Sprint TV, and Cingular recently began its Cingular Video service.

Consulting company Telephia estimated last month that more than 2 million people have subscribed to mobile video in the United States.

Of particular interest to the industry is that the average mobile TV subscriber spends $40 more on wireless services than cell phone users who don't subscribe to mobile TV services.

The advent of third-generation (or 3G) phone networks has sped the growth of mobile video.

With downloads possible at 400,000 to 700,000 bits per second, the cellular networks are now able to offer video close to what viewers can see on their televisions.

But some in the industry are saying that video that goes through the cellular companies' networks will rob too much capacity from their networks at too little profit for the phone companies.

DVB-H, MediaFLO and other technologies don't go through the cell networks.

Instead, they would use separate antennas in metro areas to beam TV signals directly to chips inside cell phones.

Aloha Partners, which owns a lot of broadcast spectrum through much of the United States, in late April created subsidiary Hiwire to build a DVB-H digital network in Las Vegas, offering several dozen channels of live TV, music, data and other services.

Aloha plans to expand it to other markets if the test succeeds.

Scott Wills, Hiwire's president and chief operating officer, told attendees at the industry's convention that a separate network for mobile TV is a far cheaper and better way to deliver video than trying to through a cellular phone network.

He estimated that a cellular company could earn $20.47 per megabit (million bits of information) by sending little multimedia messages at 20 cents each.

Those messages involved less than 10,000 bits of data.

But a 30-minute high-definition video, if sold at the same $1.99 price that Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes store charges, would require nearly a half billion bits to send, and earn the phone company virtually nothing.

That hi-def video would take up the same network capacity as more than 1 million one-minute voice calls.

That would argue that cellular networks should be used for less-demanding services such as voice and messaging, and separate networks be used to send TV signals, Wills said.

"This model (for mobile TV) doesn't work unless you're doing this on the broadcast side," Wills said.

Even as entrepreneurs debate how the video should be sent, they're also debating what consumers will want _ and pay for.

The prevalent model among cellular phone companies is for video clips of news, entertainment, sports and other content rather than long shows.

Seybold said mobile TV will mostly be short programs.

"Unless you're on an airplane or something, people aren't going to sit and watch a 30-minute show or an hour show. They're going to watch clips," he said.

For example, he said he wants to watch a two-minute clip of each Barry Bonds homer, not a three-hour baseball game.

Peter Lebow, whose Instant Films TV makes videos especially for handheld devices, said mobile video will take off when the content is compelling.

"There needs to be something where people get out of the water, gather around the fellow (holding the phone), and everybody's laughing," Lebow said, "and it's on a weekly basis."

Yoram Solomon, the Texas Instruments executive who heads an industry group pushing the DVB-H standard, the Mobile DTV Alliance, said that mobile TV "is going to be a pretty big thing. I think people underestimate the impact."

Ask people if they'll pay $15 to $20 more per month for television, and not many will say that the service appeals to them, Mr. Solomon said.

"But if you put a phone in their hands that is getting live broadcast TV, it's a totally different ballpark. This is the type of the thing that when you hold it in your hand, that's when you get it," Solomon said.

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