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Fox Starts TV Production For Cell Phones
prostoalex writes "Broadcasting television to the cell phones, which few people were actually interested in, is becoming a reality pretty fast, as Fox started making mopisodes (one-minute episodes targeted specifically for the mobile phone screen) to be broadcast on Vodafone and Verizon networks. The Fox announcement timed perfectly with Vodafone launching a broad variety of 3G services in Europe."
"Mopisode"? I thought a one-minute dramatic episode was called a "trailer".
"Broadcasting television to the cell phones, which few people were actually interested in, is becoming a reality pretty fast"
TV Phone has two factors to become a big hit
(1) The technology has to be available
(2) People have to shell out the money for it
The technology is available, which, granted, is a large step and testimony to technological projects. However, people must buy/subscribe this technology which no doubt will be very expensive. I for one would not throw a pretty penny at something I could get by turning on my public telivision. Take for example, the small tvs that are sold and the small toys which play pre-recorded clips off of cartriges. Despite their availability, I haven't yet seen their overwhelming presence in society. Besides, it is one thing to listen to a phone, or casually text-message. But to watch telivision on it is getting a bit extreme.
In addition, the technology still has a small way do go - it has to be affordable and compliant across many platforms.
For me, a decent RSS reader would be perfect. Slashdot is a far better resource than Fox.
Well then I guess this link to Google News is pretty useless too, eh?
it's incredible, isn't it?
but the phone companies are desperate to find a use for all their gadgetry other than talking to someone a long way away, without having to shout.
got any better ideas?
Not to mention that on a price per bit basis this will be something like 100,000x as expensive as cable television.
Of course, I think paying for ringtones is a dumb idea, too; but that's a multi-billion dollar industry!
I went to a presentation a month or so ago on how technology is used in not-America (it baffles the best of us!) and the speaker spent some time on a service in China where by one could subscribe to a serialized novella on the cell phone; I believe the installments were delivered during peak commute hours, and some huge percentage of the population of China signed up. Now, obviously, that's not as easy to do in English because we use letters, so we can't fit as much story on a tiny screen. I was wondering whether a development like this would come up so that we in the States, too, can get fictional content on our phones.
I suppose the answer is yes, then. Cool...I'd still rather read than watch a commercial-length piece of film on a teeny screen, though.
This is just silly. (actually just greedy) Vodafone already sells phones that have TV tuners built into them - the image is adjusted to fit the resolution of the screen. You can buy them here in Japan, I presume other countries as well. To have Fox create something for this "new 3G service" just means a new revenue stream. Just build the tuner into the phone, let people pick up the TV they want. (TV sucks the world over though, just seems like a waste of precious battery time)
I need not post my bitching for the fourth time, but I'm still so sick of these cellphones with all this crap on it. I think it's because people want everything, but only want to pay for one device. I don't know why some people don't worry about quality at all. I don't watch TV much, but I certainly don't want to watch it on a 1'' screen.
It's a Walmart civilization these days. People are told they want the absolute cheapest thing out there, nevermind quality. What is the point in paying for something that only half-works? People buy cellphones that have horrible reception and sound quality -- makes it quite useless as a phone. I work as a computer service technician; we get people in on a daily basis demanding to know why their shit broke. HMM! I don't know. PCchips motherboard, generic ram, FORSA video card. Fujitsu hard drive...Liteon optical. I don't understand these people. They want the world, but they don't want to pay. I used to buy cheap crap. THEN IT BROKE. Then I realized that there is a bit of truth to 'you get what you pay for', at least, for tangible things. After buying a few cheap electronics I decided NO MORE. I don't buy something to have it stop working in a few months.
And in case anyone is wondering, I finally found a phone that works so god damned well as phone. Motorola i90c. I'm using it on the Mike network (ie. iDen) and it's amazing. I get full signal everywhere I've been so far, in places where I got no signal with my Nokia piece of crap.
I did a stint in customer service. Tough job. It's impossible to please both the customers and the company you work for.
That having been said, the cell phone industry in the US has a lot to answer for. The fact of the matter is that everyone has been hit with at least 1 100 dollar phone bill in their lives, if not routinely. And while getting hit with that once a year means the company makes 8 dollars more per month for that subscriber, the customer suddenly feels like they're owed.
What other industry forces you to estimate the amount of something you are going to use, pay for services that may or may not be rendered, and make you pay through the nose if you guess low? This isn't a business relationship, this is The Price is Right. Do you think you will or will not roam? Will you be making any long distance calls? Do you think you will roam off our network in your home calling area? Planning on recieving any text messages? Are you sure you're only going to use 300 minutes with the holidays coming up? *DING!* The player guessed wrong. The phone company wins!
I got hit with a 100 dollar bill one month because I switched to "unlimited nationwide coverage" at a 15 dollar a month premium, traveled out to California, and mysteriously dropped off of AT&T's network. If I had paid an additional additional 10 dollars that month I would have had "unlimited nationwide coverage with off-network roaming" and recieved the same service from the same people for 90% less. They charged me 10 times the amount for the same service. That's 90 bucks they owe me. My girlfriend has to ask people to call her house long distance, because while her cellular phone company's landline long distance is only about 15 cents per minute (a high total these days, I might add), cellphone long distance is 60 cents per minute no matter which way the call is going. So if I pay 15 cents to get a call to the switching station of her cell phone company, and she pays a monthly fee to get it from the switch to her cell phone, she still has to pay a stupidly high fee for the priviledge of receiving the call.
If cell phone service were like power, you would pay X cents per minute. Maybe there would be variables like X cents per minute local, or X cents per minute off-prime, but they would be linear variables. None of this exploding-bill-for-the-same-service BS.
I buy a gallon of milk. It costs me 2 dollars. I buy another gallon of milk. It costs me 2 more dollars. I buy 400 minutes of talk time. It costs me 40 dollars. I buy another 400 minutes of talk time. It costs me 240 more dollars. Where else would we put up with this?
If the cellular companies didn't try to screw their users, maybe their users wouldn't try to get everything they can out of them.
Again, I know that isn't you. But you have to realize that the system you work for is not working for its users. BTW, cry not a tear for Verizon Wireless, it's making a healthy 10% return on capital. I'm convinced wireless companies could be making a lot more than that with a simple, fair pay-as-you-go non-prepaid no expiring minutes bullshit.
The ______ Agenda
I've got a 3G phone from 3 and I did get video spammed on it a few times from the provider advertising things, after the 3rd time i phoned them up and complained, not received one since. I'll be leaving them in january when my contract finishes anyway, they're shockingly bad.
Ewan
Anyone remember the part on the subway? Why do people need to be constantly entertained? In the words of George Carlin, Dosn't anybody just sit and think anymore?