The Associated Press

AP / Damian Dovarganes

Orb Networks demonstrates a video stream showing an NBA game on a cellphone Jan. 5 at the company’s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The screens may be tiny and the batteries overworked, but the wireless industry is bringing TV to a cellphone near you.

With the mammoth International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a backdrop, Verizon Wireless detailed a robust multimedia service for mobile phones, promising video, audio and 3-D games custom-designed for the constraints of a handheld device.

The company also announced that 12 additional markets now have access to the high-speed wireless technology required for the new service, and the 20 markets where the network upgrade was launched last year have coverage over a wider area.

The new Verizon offering, along with other multimedia wireless services unveiled at CES, marks a big step in the industry`s push to generate revenue from more than just phone calls.

On Thursday, SmartVideo Technologies Inc. announced deals to deliver live and prerecorded TV programs from ABC News, CNBC, MSNBC and the Weather Channel to cellphones equipped with Microsoft Corp.`s Windows Mobile operating system. The service, priced from $13 to $18 a month, is accessed through a Microsoft website featuring other forms of content customized for mobile devices.

Consumers have already shown an appetite for mobile e-mail, Web browsing, music and video games, but many experts view the public fascination with TV and movies as an especially potent lure for premium wireless services.

``Video is leaps and bounds above anything else`` in terms of importance to users, said Roger Entner, an industry analyst for the Yankee Group. ``This can certainly bring people in because it`s really eye candy.``

But while cellular TV has been available for several years in South Korea, wireless providers in Europe and North America are only now upgrading their networks with technology powerful enough to transmit video that doesn`t look more like a slide show.

Sprint Corp., for example, has led the charge in this country with two pay-TV services using a technological predecessor to EV-DO, the next-generation platform that Verizon Wireless has already deployed on a broad scale and that Sprint is only now beginning to roll out. While the audio comes in clear, the Sprint video barely resembles a moving picture and breaks up repeatedly.

``With EV-DO, you can have full-fledged TV on a handset,`` Entner said, noting that the speedier networks also make downloads of music and video games far less tedious.

The new Verizon service, named VCAST and scheduled for a Feb. 1 launch, will cost $15 per month for unlimited access to more than 300 daily video clips, including news and entertainment from the News Corp.`s Twentieth Century Fox studio and Viacom Inc.`s VH1 and Comedy Central cable channels.

Customers can also pay extra for 3-D games, music videos and premium channels.

The 12 new markets where Verizon`s EV-DO network is now available are Chicago; Houston; Boston; Phoenix; Providence, R.I.; Jacksonville and Orlando, Fla.; Hartford and New Haven, Conn.; and Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio. Markets with expanded coverage include New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Baltimore.

But even with more bandwidth, it`s not so easy to replicate the big-screen experience on a device with limited screen size, audio quality, processing power, storage capacity and battery life - the last of which tends to suffer with improvements to any of the other factors.

Further, it`s not very clear how long users will want to stare at such a small screen, or whether they`ll be in a position to watch anything longer than a few minutes while roaming about.

That`s why Verizon and others are trying not to inflate expectations for the new medium, stressing that most users will want to watch only short bursts of video. Wireless providers have been asking media companies to produce specialized video clips - brief news reports and ``mobisodes,`` or episodes of real TV programs that run as short as a minute.

Vodfone Group PLC, part owner of Verizon Wireless with Verizon Communications Inc., forged such a deal in November as it launched its own next-generation wireless service across Europe. The deal with the Fox studio calls for a series of one-minute dramas based on its hit TV show ``24.``

Nonetheless, innovations with display technologies could make full-length programs and movies more appealing in the future. For instance, thin-film displays stashed inside the device might be unfurled for viewing. Or special eyeglasses might project the image directly in front of the eyes.

``People don`t listen to a silver-dollar-sized speaker on the iPod. We put in high-quality headphones and get totally immersed in the music,`` said Phil Leigh, president of Inside Digital Media, a research firm in Tampa, Fla.

He said video needs an analogous development with eyeglass screens - something that has proven technologically, but not economically feasible for consumers.

Technology companies are so confident about future demand for mobile TV that Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. are developing competing wireless chips designed specifically to receive and process video signals more efficiently.

Qualcomm also is investing $800 million to launch a national cellular TV service in 2006 over its own spectrum, broadcasting up to 20 channels for wireless carriers to sell their customers.