Just as we'd envisioned, the Invision candybar (if a phone this stubby can, in fact, be called a candybar) from LG is now a reality for AT&T. The phone becomes just AT&T's third to support its MediaFLO-based Mobile TV service, taking a similar line to Samsung's Access by stuffing a landscape display, 1.3-megapixel camera, and HSDPA into a squarish case that's sure to make minimalists and traditionalists swoon; what's more, it also takes the honor of being AT&T's smallest Mobile TV-equipped handset to date. It's available today for $99.99 with a $50 rebate and two years' worth of commitment -- just be sure to factor the cost of the Mobile TV add-on into your budget.

The follow-on to Motorola's sporty and moderately popular (for a stereo bluetooth headset, anyway) S9 may not have launched yet -- a disappointment, considering the original plan for a Q2 release when it was announced at CES -- but perhaps a little last-minute paint job was the reason for the delay. We've now spotted the S9-HD in a bright white getup with blue accents, a far cry from the black of the model shown at CES (and presumably still slated for launch) or the red of the original, but let's not kid ourselves: this one has a way better chance of finding its way into an ear canal or two. Hopefully we'll see it within a few weeks -- just in time for a successor to be launched at CES 2009, no doubt.

When one music store on your handset just isn't enough, there's Vodafone. Evidently not at all content with just the Omnifone-provided unlimited service, the carrier has just revealed a more traditional outlet for buying music on one's phone. Vodafone Music comes pre-installed on Vodafone live! handsets and can be installed on a plethora of others. Put simply, the application enables users to search for songs right on their mobile and purchase them for playback -- nothing too complicated about that, right? Hit up the read link to see if your current cellie is compatible.

[Via UnwiredView]

Apple's experimented with allowing iTunes to stream over the internet as well as your LAN in the past and quickly removed the feature (probably due to RIAA pressure), so we're not placing too much stock in this, but AppleInsider's unearthed a patent that seems to describe a way to stream music over the 'net to your iPhone / iPod touch. The goal is to prevent you from having to selectively sync content to your device -- instead, you'd sync just the metadata and stream whatever you wanted direct from your machine as though it was all stored locally. There are some obvious problems here -- it wouldn't work if you didn't have service (or over EDGE, really), most home upstream connections aren't that fast, etc., etc., -- but it's certainly interesting, and a welcome addition to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app?

[Via Macrumors, thanks Mark]

MobiTV has been around for quite awhile, and although it has seen its fair share of ups and downs, today's a day for celebration in the offices that remain. After hitting the 3 million mark in February, the company is now claiming that its benefiting from some 4 million subscriptions. Charlie Nooney, MobiTV's CEO, was quoted as saying that the firm was "thrilled to be on the cusp of mass market acceptance for mobile entertainment in North America." We don't know if we'd go that far just yet, but here's a tip of the hat to you anyway.

[Via RCRWireless, image courtesy of PDAsNews]

First things first: open wide and ingest a mouthful of salt. Put away that bitter beer face and down it, we said! Okay, now that you're adequately skeptical, get a load of this. Word on the street has it that Nokia is currently working with Microsoft in order to integrate the Zune Marketplace into the former firm's handsets. No, there's no talk of a Zune Phone here -- no new hardware at all, actually. Instead, it seems the two could be figuring out a way to offer Zune Marketplace content on Nokia's prolific "non-smartphones." Make no mistake, Nokia sells quite a few low-end handsets, and if the Redmond powerhouse could get its material on 'em... well, we're pretty sure you see where this could go. Oh, and we're totally not buying this until N-Gage pops up on the Xbox 360.

[Via Electronista]

Seems like the picture's getting clearer by the minute for paid mobile TV content, and it's a pretty bleak picture indeed. Over in Germany, DVB-H subscriptions are dying a slow, painful death (despite a healthy push by the European Union) thanks to free DVB-T content and a lineup of compatible phones to match, and now, Toshiba is shuttering its four-year-old Moba Ho satellite-based service thanks to the overwhelming availability and popularity of one-seg tuners, which like DVB-T in Germany, offer programming at no charge. Technical advantages, and to a large degree, entertainment value both tend to get overlooked when you've got a free product competing against a paid product -- it's frequently a disruptive economic force that takes profit right out of the equation, and Toshiba's learning that lesson the hard way. Keep your chins up, though, guys; at least you lost this battle for an entirely different reason than you did HD DVD, right? Guess that's not helping much. Anyway, expect the service to vaporize by March of next year, with Toshiba planning to take a one-time hit of $232 million for the shutdown.

The problem with selling licenses for spectrum -- any kind of spectrum -- is that there's an implicit assumption that the investment a company's going to make into buying the airwaves and building out the infrastructure necessary to take advantage of it is eventually going to pay off. For the winners of Germany's DVB-H license, though, the economics simply don't make sense; the country's carriers stone-cold gave up on the concept once they lost the license bid, instead turning to bundling DVB-T receivers to steal free signals designed for plain ol' TV reception. The winning bidder, Mobile 3.0, had intended to sell users on packages costing a handful of euros a month -- but "free" is a pretty powerful word, so even if there's a marginal battery performance disadvantage with the DVB-T setup, it's going to be virtually impossible for any pay service to fight it, especially when carriers are putting zero effort into making sure DVB-H tuners are on board their handsets. As best as we can tell, T-Systems' DVB-H trial wrapped up in December, so yeah, that pretty much spells the death of the so-called standard in Bavaria. What say you, EU?

[Via mocoNews]

Even the best music phones aren't typically pegged as audiophile-friendly powerhouses -- and actually, they're still not going to be, but the infusion of a little Dolby tech into LG's lineup might grease things up a bit, anyway. LG has announced that it's the very first manufacturer to license Dolby's suite of audio processing products for the mobile world outside of Japan, a suite that includes surround sound, bass and high-frequency enhancement, volume leveling, graphic equalization by content type, and a magical mono-to-stereo converter -- nothing really revolutionary, but the Dolby name carries a lot of weight, and it'll be good to see phone makers consulting with some legit audio experts to help improve the experience. The first Dolby Mobile products from LG should reach the market in the fourth quarter of this year.

So, we figure one of two things has happened here: either the Samsung Access has been a solid seller for AT&T, leading the carrier to request a near-clone from competitor LG -- or LG saw the Access and felt compelled to provide a clone of its own volition. Either way, the CB630 Invision is getting to the AT&T Mobile TV fight a little late, because we're actually hearing that the Access is already scheduled for an official sunset (not Sunset) on August 24, along with the Sony Ericsson Z750, Samsung SLM, and the Mobile TV-less version of the LG Vu, the CU915. We're also hearing that it'll launch on August 13 for $99.99 on contract with a $50 rebate, so getcha popcorn ready, people.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

The thoroughly-discussed, briefly-available conduit betwixt the realms of RIM and Apple, BlackBerry Media Sync, is now available in a totally official capacity for your downloading pleasure. Owners of Pearls, Curves, and 8800s (and pretty much everything that's released out of Waterloo from here on out, we'd imagine, starting with the Bold) can now snag music and playlists right off iTunes, though DRM'd tracks are naturally off limits. Then again, aren't BlackBerry owners too busy having power lunches, signing contracts, picking out new suits, and generally being important to enjoy trivialities like music on the road?

[Via MobileSyrup]

Although Raleigh, North Carolina is set to become one of the first DVB-SH test markets in America, WRAL is already testing out yet another standard. The station known nationwide for taking its local newscasts to the world of HD while everyone else sat and moped in their SD control rooms is currently teaming with CBC in order to test out the ATSC-compatible MPH mobile television transmission system. As we've seen before, the system enables "local broadcasters to deliver digital television to mobile devices including cellphones, laptops and personal media players," all while moving quickly in vehicles, hoverboards, rocket-powered scooters -- you name it. There's no word on what exactly will happen once the trials conclude, but we'll be keeping an ear to the ground just in case it's something big.

[Via BroadcastingCable]

At risk of getting delayed right into obscurity, Sony Ericsson looks like it's finally just about ready to release its long-announced PlayNow Arena mobile media store in a couple of European locales. SEMC Blog got the lowdown on screen shots of both the web-based and mobile versions of the Arena client, and we'll be honest, we're not really seeing what took so damn long. Okay, so we've got a unified portal for buying games, images, and music -- that's great and all, but not terribly unique, innovative, or interesting beyond the fact that many modern Sony Ericsson handsets should have tight integration with it out of the box. At least N-Gage can use the excuse that its fairly extensive community gaming aspect took some work to build out and get right; this, on the other hand, is little more than a glorified media store. Tell you what, though, guys: release a US-spec W980, and we'll cut you some slack the next time you delay a web portal by a few months. Honest.

We wouldn't say they're necessarily crying foul, but Verizon is quick to point out that AT&T used its clout as an Olympic sponsor to secure an exclusive on an Olympic coverage channel for its MediaFLO-based mobile TV network. It's a big deal for Verizon simply because it and AT&T are the only two US carriers to offer such a feature at this point -- but there's probably no use crying over spilled milk, and sure enough, Verizon's busy setting up a video series on its VCAST content deck that'll offer highlights of the Olympic action out of Beijing. AT&T, meanwhile, picks up an exclusive through NBC Olympics 2Go -- so we hope you Vu and Access owners are medley swimming fans.

Update: The New York Times reports that 1/3 of all first-wave applications will be games. We also corrected the Bajarin misquote above.

[Thanks, Matt and Chris Z.]