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."

Comments

CNN Coverage

[calibanDNS]

CNN's coverage can be found here.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

What an insanely stupid idea. One minute TV episodes for the cell phone. Can someone please point me to the place where they give jobs like this out, to come up with incredibly stupid ideas like this?

Instead of spending the money on this, FOX might as well have just spent the money on sexual harassment training.

Re:WTF

[erick99]

People are nuts. They want the tiniest cell phone possible, and then they want full motion/realtime video on it as well as a huge amount of memory for an MP3 player, add some circuitry for GPS, and whatever else. Do people really want to watch tv on their phone? Maybe this trend has more to do with people never being home because they have to or choose to work insane hours and also run kids back and forth and try to do other things as well. We are a Type A society I suppose. If it's gotten so bad that watching tv on a cell phone seems like a good idea, well, then, it's gotten pretty bad.

1minute episodes ? commericals

[sPaKr]

I thought the correct term for a one minute episode was commercial. I cant belive people are going to pay for that.

Re:1minute episodes ? commericals

[cyfer2000]

maybe fox just made a big investment in battery industry.

"Mopisode"

[tepples]

"Mopisode"? I thought a one-minute dramatic episode was called a "trailer".

Mobile hazard

[Lancaibheal]

Great.

Now I have to watch out for morons watching TV on their mobile phones while they drive their souped-up 4WDs in rush hour traffic.

Thanks, Fox!

Re:Mobile hazard

[Craig Ringer]

You'd be a tad more credible if you felt like putting your name to your post.

As it happens, I agree with you. Cyclists and major roads/highways/freeways do not mix. The difference is that instead of saying "so cyclists should get off the road" I say "I'm paying for this, and can expect decent transport infrastructure too." When roads are upgraded, it's not hard to add a bike path or a cycle lane or two, nor does it take much space. In general, I strongly prefer to stick to cycleways anyway, and in Perth (Western Australia) that's usually a viable option.

On minor roads, however - a cyclist has as much right to use the road as anybody else. It is entirely reasonable to expect not to be wiped out by morons just because they can't be bothered looking where they're going. Paying attention isn't hard. When it comes to the speed issue, at worst people have to slow down for 30s until there's a decent place to pass, and only because that bit of road is too stupidly cramped. Deal with it. Seriously.

As for the insults and generalisations, my thoughts about giant-truck driving redneck hicks are similar - but I'm not making the assumption that you are one like you've made unreasonable assumptions about me (despite the strong temptation to do so).

I must note, also, that I've met more than a few winy idiots myself. Some have been cyclists - and really, painfully bitchy about it. The sort of people who will tell someone who lives 30km from their work in a country that hits 40C in summer that they don't need a car. The temptation to beat them to death is strong. A similar temptation exists for intolerant morons who assume all cyclists are like that and who think they're the only ones whose needs matter.

One minute episodes?

[wrinkledshirt]

Well, at least they're making disinformation more efficient.

[ducks and covers]

What New Hell is This?

[rueger]

Oh great now I can enjoy idiots on cel phones "sharing" fine Fox programming while I'm trying to enjoy my dinner in a restaurant.

As if their pointless yattering conversations weren't enough....

Why is it Different in the US?

[Oyume]

I wonder why Vodafones in the US aren't like the ones here in Japan -- The newer phones receive regular broadcast TV, no fees or special equipment required. On your Vodafone you can watch anything that's not on cable TV. Pretty nice. But I just don't get the whole "download and pay" gambit in the WEST...

*shrug*

Re:Why is it Different in the US?

[cgenman]

Roll-out of cellular products in the US is terribly, terribly slow. For one, uptake in the US is slow, with many people holding on to their phones until they break. For another, the US market is quite large but needs to be supported as a cohesive whole... As such if Verizon wants to try something out, they will wait until success is reasonably assured then do a full nationwide roll out. Japan is a smaller, less-risky market which has traditionally used cell phones in roles that in the west would have been filled by computers... as computer uptake was somewhat slower over there and internet access was more spotty.

Plus the carriers out here get to say what their customers use as phones, not vice-versa. Up until recently phones had to be flashed to a specific network provider and a specific user... the idea of buying a general purpose cell phone and finding a provider later is laughable here, despite being a perfectly functional model in Europe.

We expect the carrier to subsidise the cost of the phones, and then are shocked that we can't get any phone that has features they don't want us to have. Sigh. I'd say vote with your dollars, but we really don't have any choice here.

Re:Why is it Different in the US?

[BlastM]

_Not a troll_ just an observation.

I have never been to Japan, but from what I gather Japanese society is generally tech-profficient and consumers make educated decisions when buying electronics.

Apart from us geeks who are skeptical of big business at the best of times and paranoid at other times, western society will consume what the television tells it to, and is short-sighted enough not to realise that micro-payments add up quickly.

I'm an Australian, and I can see this happening right now. SMS and MMS has become a huge fad, as have mobile phones in general. Many young people now face debt problems after running up phone bills in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars.

Broadband internet service is well below basic for a developed nation, but that's mostly attributed to the reelection of the conservative federal government that has sold half of the telecommunications utility that owns all the copper phone infrastructure and DSLAMs and most of the outgoing internet pipes.

The population just isn't tech-savvy enough to force the market to be competitive, and as a result we are all fucked over, although only the geeks (and the farmers in the outback who can barely make phone calls) can see it.

Re:Why is it Different in the US?

[cgenman]

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.

Before they do that...

[infernalC]

By gosh, I want Verizon to get rid of those fast-busy signals around rush hour and all those dead spots on my way to work. Cell service just plain sucks for a lot of us out here.

Re:Before they do that...

[Kintanon]

If you live in the New York Metro area then rush hour is never going to get better. We've saturated the area with cell towers, but each tower can only carry so many calls. When all of you people get on the phone at once when you get off work there just isn't enough infrastructure to carry the calls. The deadspots in the cities are usually caused by dense buildings like parking garages between you and the cell tower. Older skyscrapers will also kill the signal.

Kintanon

Really common here in Korea

[Jack Porter]

The 3G phones here can do streaming video (including cable TV) and it's really common to see my coworkers watching the latest movie trailer on their phones.

You pay per packet, and for content for some 'premium' stuff like music videos, and it's a relatively closed system so the telco and the content providers love it.

so much greed...

[terrymaster69]

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)

Uggh

[BHearsum]

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.

One minute equals...

[DoktorSeven]

45 seconds of commercials, 5 seconds of the FOX logo ("You're watching FOX Fone!"), and 10 seconds of actual content.

I'll pass, thanks.