So let's imagine for a second that Mobile TV takes off, which was the premise of last week's Churchill Club event. We'll receive TV and video content on our cell phone through Wi-Fi, the carriers' DVB-H/MediaFLO networks (broadcast) or the mobile Internet browser (unicast). The problem with this picture, is that with such a variety of different sources, it's hard to find what's available, when and where. Start-up Roundbox with partner Gemstar-TV Guide -who claims nearly 90 percent of the satellite and digital cable electronic programing guide market in the U.S., is solving just that with its Electronic Service Guide for mobile phones.

"In cable, anything that shows up in your set-top box basically came in through that cable coax. In the mobile case, the problem is that you have content coming from broadcast networks as well as off the unicast networks: video-on-demand content as well as long tail content like YouTube...", explains Vinod Valloppillil, VP Product Management at Roundbox.

The idea is that such guides with better navigation should boost the ad market on mobile phones (expected to hit $4.8 billion in 4 years!) thus sparking the need for mobile video content and sending this whole mobile TV space into stratosphere!

Roundbox is also a "datacasting" software provider and is banking on the rapid growth of "datacasting" services that use the same broadcast networks for delivery of non video content to phones, such as a real-time feed from the Major League Baseball like Valloppillil demoed.

"Because it's been over datacast [on the operator's existing wireless network], it has a zero marginal network cost... it's pure profit/revenue to the mobile operator and the content provider", says the Roundbox exec.