Slashdot Mirror
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. ...
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Nokia's Communicator cellphone has included RealPlayer for at least 1.5 years.
The only reason they keep trying to add such technology to phones is so they can continue to rip you off with their charges. Do you really want to pay air-time rates to watch tiny tiny tiny movies?
Here in the UK the mobile phone companies need their clients to spend an average of £50 per month ($70-$80) just to allow them to recover from the enormous debts of the 3G licences they lumbered themselves with.
My bill is much less than that a month, and I really don't intend to use any gimicky technology they offer me to tempt me to pay them stupid amounts of cash.
I guess this will give a whole new dimension to phone sex ...
In the country where this is being marketed, there is already an "actual 3G network" in place, so this isn't pointless technology. I am currently a DoCoMo customer who happens to be in the market for a new phone, and I must say, I am quite excited about this. It will be nice to have the media that my phone uses play nicely with my iBook, unlike the format that J-Phone uses, which if sent to a computer, can only be viewed on a PC.
And this technology is not entirely useless in the US. My family happens to live there, and with this, I will be able to send them quicktime movies from my phone...sure, it is a novelty, but it sounds good to me. :D
Just my 2 yen.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Makes MMS look positively naff, why send a single picture when you can send a video stream ?
BUT if you think about the bandwidth requirements of streaming then it becomes hard for the mobile infrastructure to support.
20 million phones, say only 1% active at a time means 200,000 phones active, each streaming at 256 kilobits means 6400000 kilo bytes of bandwidth required. In other words that is 6.4 GigaBYTES of bandwith required by the mobile network.
Video is a nice idea, and for low usage it works okay within a network, but either the quality has to be crap, or the network investment has to be huge to support video-phone technology over IP. There are better compression elements out there that could work at 64 kilobits, but that is still over a Gigabyte per second network.
AND that is just for a country with only 20 million mobiles.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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.
Now if only these would make sense in the U.S...
The Economist had a great article a few months ago about 3G around the world. Asia does lead the US in 3G, and both places are way far ahead of Europe. Essentially, Europe's insistence on one standard, which worked nicely for 2G, screwed the pooch raw with 3G, that, and the fact that Asia and the US didn't license out 3G, so European cell carriers had to take on debt for billions for 3G whereas no one else did.
There's no doubt in my mind that Asia will continue leading in 3G...for the simple reason that while 3G is developing here in the US, it's been pretty hard to sell Americans on anything other than just talking on the phone. There is some cultural difference that makes Asians all giddy about spiffy 3G features, so it doesn't surprise me to see the newest and greatest 3G tech. over there.
There may well be soon. Remember that the number of people who own mobile phones is numbered in billions.
If the trailers are free of charge or minimal charge kids, in the UK at least, will use the service and then video phone to their mates to arrange to see the film etc. etc. etc.
The issue here is for future market share available - not current market share. The estimates for increases in Linux desktop share are, I would imagine, far lower than the number of people expected to move to 3G mobile system in the next 3 years.
By getting Quicktime onto phones Apple provide a way to sell their encoders and lever Microsoft's format off of the mobile platform.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
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.
"The big hurdle that QuickTime has to clear is that it isn't a nicely bundled solution of video creation management and security," said Jones. "They don't have some of the content management and DRM capabilities that Real and Microsoft have."
Everyone else calls that a plus. No DRM, no security, less crap to deal with.
On another note, someone was asking whether there was truly a greater demand for this than a Linux port of QT. Perhaps there is, but also, this could be a way to pave the road for video phones.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984