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QuickTime On Your Cell Phone
blamanj writes "Apple and DoCoMo are confirming that a new version of QuickTime is on the way supporting MPEG-4 images over 3G cellular service." Now if only these would make sense in the U.S. ...
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Course, bandwidth problems come into play but imagine the possibilities...can you see me now?
3G phones currently support video playback and transfer. For example, he new J-Phone even has video capture. So the interesting bit is not that it has video, but that it's in Quicktime format.
From the article: Microsoft and Real incorporate Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in their file format, giving companies an added feeling of security when publishing their content. This, Jones thinks, could be a disadvantage for Apple.
Two things: 1. Have you ever tried to pull data off a cell phone? Especially streaming data? Security through obscurity may not be a great method, but it sure is a pain in the ass. 2. Those people who have issues with DRM should take note. If Apple continues their No-DRM policy, these phones could become the Fair-Use-Geek's first choice.
From the article: Analysts see the adoption of QuickTime by DoCoMo as a way for Apple to broaden its customer base and to have customers associate the QuickTime brand when they buy content.
I don't see this as a very good thing. Video playback should be seemless to the user. I don't want or care about codec branding. What this probably really means is that there will be an annoying Quicktime splash screen every time I open up a video (in order to have me "associate the Quicktime brand") blah.
[...] but imagine the possibilities...can you see me now?
I don't have to imagine. When I get on the train and see twenty people in my car using camera phones, it creeps me out. It'll be worse when video is used everywhere. Who knows how many people are taking pictures of you, anywhere.
Are there really more users who own 3G phones AND want to watch movies on them AND who will pay the horrendous bandwidth charges required than there are desktop Linux users who want to watch movie trailors? I don't think so.
For truly open formats, you have to stick either exclusively to the stuff that is standardized by a standards body, or you have to go with a fully free and open codebase. 90% open doesn't count. Open stream format with the possibility of proprietary codecs doesn't count.
Apple's efforts with QuickTime are really no different from those of Real or Microsoft: they want to dominate multimedia with a format that they control. Their confusing statements about openness and relationships with MPEG4 are simply attempts to muddy the waters and confuse the issues. The best thing consumers can do is to say "no" to all of them--because otherwise consumers are going to pay the price in the long run. There are plenty of alternatives--we don't need Apple, Microsoft, or Real for multimedia.
Who wants a phone with pop-ups and nag screens? I just uninstalled Quicktime yesterday when I realized it now has something that runs automatically when I boot. Uninstall was faster than tracking down and disabling that "feature".
True, true. Downloading meaningful video streams to a cell phone with GSM or even GPRS is not going to be feasible any time soon because of bandwidth restrictions. (Although we have chalkers here, and that WiFi SD card...)
.WMV files to phone's SD expansion card.
But convergence is here already, even if it's not realtime convergence. C'mon over to my house, and I'll show you how I do it on my TMobile PocketPC phone.
1) Record films/shows to PC with WinTV and SnapStream. (Alternately, download saved shows from TiVo with WinTV and WinDVR.)
2) Use SnapStream's Pocket PC converter or Windows Media Encoder to munge down the size of the file.
3a) Enable SnapStream server. Leave house.
4a) Dial into ISP from PocketPC Phone, connect to SnapStream server, and stream video files (takes a long-ass time).
OR
3b) Save shrunken
4b) Leave house.
5) Watch whatever the hell you want wherever the hell you want to in Media Player. Yesterday, rather than leafing through germ-laden back issues of Good Housekeeping as I whiled away an hour in the doctor's waiting room, I watched "The Sopranos", while at the same time waiting on hold with the veteranarian's office.
Oh, and then at the vet's office, I read an eBook.
Look, I want to make phone calls with my cell phone. I want to sometimes receive them.
This is all. I don't want my cell phone to take pictures, play games, play QuickTime movies, launch surface to air missles, sing to me on lonely nights, do the jig, reminisce about the halcyon days of yore, and so on.
All this whizz bang cell phone "technology" is obnoxious and a textboox example of feature creep.
STOP THE MADNESS!
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
The headline should be "3GPP support to your cell phone", and it's not all that surprising, but it's very good news for everyone (including RealNetworks, where I'm from). We've been doing a lot of work in the 3GPP, and it's great to see that work paying dividends. If you really want to find out what this stuff is about, look at the spec (and yes, I hate the fact that these are Word docs in zipfiles as much as anyone).
.mov, .mp4, and .3gp. DoCoMo's announcement was good news for 3GPP, and given the support throughout the Helix platform for 3GPP formats, codecs, and protocols, we view it as great news for the Helix Community.
Much of the confusion around this subject comes from a lack of understanding of the difference between
As another poster pointed out, only a piece of 3GPP is based on Quicktime is the container file format itself (the bit that says "here's a 3000 byte chunk of data with this 32bit codec identifier"). Another piece (the protocol) is based on work RealNetworks pioneered (RTSP). Moreover, the Helix DNA Client supports the 3GPP specification today.
RealNetworks added MPEG-4 and 3GPP support 10 months ago with the RealSystem Mobile Server (see press release),
and MPEG-4 support will be included in the Helix DNA Server when it is released in the near future.
As for the speculation about Apple releasing 3GPP encoding support, we would welcome them to the party. In early November we announced that a version of our Producer product for creating 3GPP content will ship in Q1 of 03. (see press release) Moreover, we offer our encoding framework as open source (and naturally open APIs) so that you can add support for whatever format you want to. We've given you a head start by implementing Ogg Vorbis support.
Again, the new phones sound great. Lots of new devices for Helix encoders and servers to work with.