[sbarre]

When I was in Japan in 2008, my friend's cell phone screen could rotate out 90 degrees (into a traditional 16:9 TV-looking layout [1]) and he could watch quite a few TV channels on it that way.

This wasn't something he was paying for, it was just part of his base plan apparently..

[1] http://images.gizmag.com/hero/9604_8070843257.jpg

[kalleboo]

It's called 1seg and is part of the Japanese digital terrestrial OTA TV network (the regular digital OTA broadcasts contain a low-bandwidth stream for mobile devices to pick up).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1seg