Free digital TV broadcasts for portable devices equipped with special receivers began in Japan's major urban areas last Saturday, although people, for now, can watch only the same programs shown on regular television sets in living rooms.

Japan's mobile TV technology isn't all that innovative or even the first to market. But it does show promise for linkups with entertainment downloads and other new services in a country already used to relying on the omnipresent mobile phone for everything from searching the Web for restaurants to paying for that meal.

The new gadgets are essentially cell phones with antennas. They use an adaptation of digital broadcasts - the same ones that can be picked up by specially equipped digital television sets - rather than an Internet connection to relay video.

And these are not prepackaged video that can be downloaded on demand, the type already widely available around the world on many cell phones. Naturally, gadget-loving Japan is flooded with such services.

Nonetheless, proponents of the mobile TV technology believe it holds great potential in linking to electronic shopping and advertising.

A viewer who sees an appealing outfit on an actress could be coaxed to access an electronic shopping link on the mobile phone. Or should a theme song appeal, mobile TV users could click to buy and download the music file.

That's important because the mobile programming, for now, is no different from regular TV shows. Broadcasting regulations won't permit special programming catering to mobile devices until 2008. Even then, licensing will be necessary, making it difficult for innovative newcomers to start making programs.

Hitoshi Mitomo, professor at Waseda University's graduate school of global information and telecommunication studies, believes regulations here need to be changed to foster new businesses that will make TV on-the-go attractive and trendy.

"There are many hurdles from both the business side and the consumer side," Mitomo said. "What it needs is appealing content to watch on the handsets that offers ingenious lifestyle uses."

Other nations offer mobile TV services, using different technologies.

Nokia has been testing its technology in Germany, France and elsewhere, adapting terrestrial digital broadcast for mobile devices to prolong battery life, although it doesn't offer such handsets in Japan. In South Korea, the signals get beamed via satellites.

In the United States, technology such as MobiTV, offered by Cingular Wireless LLC, the country's largest cell-phone carrier, already brings live TV to some phones and portable devices. But they stream shows over Internet connections, and terrestrial digital broadcast for phones is barely getting started in the United States.

In Japan, images simply get relayed through the air via standard and newly built TV towers that have been modified to relay digital broadcast, in the place of old-style analog broadcasts.

Japan's major mobile carriers won't disclose sales figures, but finding the new phones has been hard as eager consumers snap up the limited number of available handsets.

Misogo Kado, a 37-year-old software designer from Yokohama, near Tokyo, is completely sold on his $340 TV cell phone.

"You know how every cell phone now comes with a digital camera?" Kado said. "In the same way, this is going to become a standard feature."

Although the screens are small, Akihide Kuwamoto is thankful he had a TV mobile phone during the recent World Baseball Classic series, which the Japanese team won. The games were televised ahead of the start of the service as a pilot run.

"It's convenient for watching TV whenever you have a spare moment," the 32-year-old Web designer said. "I like watching it while I'm eating out because you don't need to push any buttons or anything."

Mobile TV may also provide an opportunity to get an older, less geeky generation hooked on mobile services.

Ultimately, that could assist services like NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s Internet-linking "i-mode," which allows cell phone users - for a fee - to download music, exchange e-mail, play computer games and watch video clips.

"I-mode was mostly dependent on younger people and other heavy users," said Masayuki Ishikawa, senior manager of multimedia services at NTT DoCoMo. "TV is familiar to older people and all ages."

But there's one drawback, Ishikawa noted. "People who'd been using i-mode or doing e-mail may start watching TV."