Television On Your Cell Phone

XopherMV writes "MobiTV is billed as the first streaming service to broadcast real-time video to cell phones. Offered by Sprint, it costs an additional $9.99 monthly, is adding new channels, and supports various handsets. My phone features 21 channels, some of them typical broadcast channels like Fox Sports and MSNBC, while others are designed for the mobile environment, such as NBC Mobile. What's it like to watch TV on a cell phone? The TV junkie in me says it's great. I really like the idea that I can pull my cell phone out of my pocket and catch up with the latest news and sports scores in an instant. Read on at MSN."

Comments

Not first and apparently lousy quality...

[Cpt_Corelli]

Well, I hardly believe they are the first company to offer streaming video to cell phones. Europe is already switching to the third generation of mobile communications (3G) and most networks offer streaming video at a much higher quality than what is displayed in their demo.

3G networks have a much higher bandwidth (384 kbps) compared to previous technology such as GSM.

Most of the 3G phones have two-way simultaneous video chat as well.

Been there, Done that, NTT DoCoMo FOMA

[kryonD]

Just curious, but did Sprint have the integrity to put a star next to the word 'first', and then have the words 'in America' printed in text so small most folks couldn't read it, or did they just flat out lie again?

TV and movies have been available in Japan on cell phones for nearly two years. When I left in February, no one really cared all that much unless something important was going on. I would bet that tons of commuters are watching the olympics while riding the JR to work and back. The picture quality is actually pretty darned good. I personally never bought a FOMA phone because the 3G coverage in my area was still in the works. And the way they switched email from being directly on the phone to being through a web portal was kind of annoying when you were already used to just pressing a button and being inside of your INBOX on their 50x series of phones.

With all the political BS going on in the media, I swear I'd donate money to the first 527 group who titled themselves "Disillusioned Cell Phone Users for a President Who Will Make The Cellular Companies Leave The Dark Ages and Stop F&^%ing Over The Public With Overpriced Used Technology".

Re:Been there, Done that, NTT DoCoMo FOMA

[vena]

you could have looked at the links. MobiTV bills itself as the first *global* cellphone based television network.

Re:How long will it work for?

[tomhudson]

How much bandwidth does this use up?

If you check out the demo, it can't use up too much bandwidth:

1. Tiny, pixilated, herky-jerky picture (worse than video for windows 3.1 on a 286)
2. The demo crashes (at least in firefox) when it tries to change a channel (shade of twilight zone: "Don't touch that dial. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical"). That's okay thugh - I certainly didn't want to listen to C&W this early in the day/week/year/lifetime.

All in all, much easier (and cheaper) to buy the fm tuner headset that motorola sells for my cell phone.

I tried it

[IRNI]

I am a sprint customer and I tried MobiTV. I cancelled after the first day and got a refund. In my mind it is a totally retarded idea for the following reasons:

1. It is way to small to make anything out.

2. it isn't loud enough coming out of the tiny little speaker on the back of the phone. Sure you can put in a headphone to hear it better but I don't have one with me at all times.

3. The backlight goes out after a couple of seconds so it is hard to see again... of course I could set my phone to always leave the backlight on... then I should be able to watch a 30 minute show before I have to charge again I guess.

4. The channels are beyond rediculous. I couldn't find anything worth watching.

5. This "TV" on the cell phone is more like a slideshow. There is no motion. At 9.99 this is an absolute ripoff.

MobiTV Sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a vendor call center for a major US cell carrier. And theoretically we are supposed to support MobiTV. It is just a fast slideshow with audio, and it's pretty crappy.

Besides the way the network works. Emergency calls take top priority, regular voice calls next, and data is dead last. During peak times of the day your data rates are going to suck. So why are they trying to overload the networks with limited bandwidth?

On another note. I don't know why people aren't using black & white streaming video and mono audio. It would be geat for dialup connections.

Japanese already have TV on their phone

[kyoko21]

The Japanese cell phone carrier Vodaphone started rolling out phones with TV abilities by integrating a TV tuner into the cell phone itself to pick up over the air TV signals. This past spring they've rolled out a new line of phones from Toshiba to expand upon their previously released phones from NEC. I first saw advertisements for these new phones on Japanese Drama shows.

More information on these phones can be found in the translated URL below. Granted though, this tuner cannot pickup Digital Signals over the air, hence no HDTV ready.

Link here.

Re:good idea?

[XO]

Actually, I just loaded this up on a Samsung A680 Sprint PCS, and compared the MSNBC to real MSNBC on Satellite.. the video coming into the Samsung phone was about 30 seconds AHEAD of the video coming into the Satellite TV.

And the A680 is capable of pulling off 15fps when the datastream is fast enough