Slashdot Mirror
Television on your Phone
zxnos writes "Television on mobile is all geared up to be the next big thing as UK provider Orange, rolls out a mobile handset service, which will offer customers top TV shows and channels.
Channels such as Cartoon Network and CNN will be made available for a monthly subscription of £10. This will be UK's first TV-on-the-mobile service, which will allow customers to watch news, sport and entertainment programmes on their phone."
Why would anyone want a phone on their TV? I mean sure it might be convenient, but what if I've been making calls the battery goes flat? I can't watch TV!
Why can't I get a TV which is just a TV?
...that people using their phones while driving was a problem before?
oooh, tv on a inch square screen! leave the TV to the TVs. an RSS feed would be much better.
Instead of yet another service to be charged for, what about receiving broadcast TV?
I see all these new mobile technologies develop. Mobile web access, 3G networks, multimedia content, picture mail.... these are all well and good.
What I question is why there isn't more urgency on working on the increasingly insufficient battery life of the modern mobile device. This is not restricted to cell phones, either, but is particularly relevant in this case. The more features we jam-pack into these phones, the more and more our talk time (which is why we call these devices cellular telephones and not something else: they should make phone calls) tanks. Granted, much technological innovation and research is being done globally with hydrogen fuel cells, increasing efficiency of solar technologies, etc.... but the effort spent adding another gimmick (or feature, whichever is less offensive to you) is wasted when this mobile power problem for these devices seems ever the more relevant....
Though the possibility of watching Scrubs at work to make my bosses that much madder at me seems enticing....
Seriously, we should dedicate more energy to the mobile power problem.
The Crimson Dragon
I am setting up a new chain of Opticians to cater for all the people who damage their eyesight while trying to watch tv on their mobile.
I also expect to be recruiting medical staff shortly to cater for all the people who get injured becase they were watching their mobile when they should really have been watching where they were going.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
And I thought the crazy frog ringtone was anoying. Just imagine people watching re-runs of the eurovision song contest while they go to work!
-a good strong signal that won't drop calls
-a long battery life
-the ability to survive repeatedly being dropped onto a hard surface from a height of about 5 feet
-waterproofing might be nice
Maybe once I can get all that, I'll be interested in a phone that can deliver TV shows, play Beethoven ring tones, take grainy pictures, and allow me to play simply video games. Honestly, what do these companies think that people buy phones for?
Certainly not a bad service - only problem would be having some odd person on the subway ask to watch with you. All this video-over-widerange-wireless stuff makes me wonder though - what are the long-term limits of wireless data transfer over large areas? I anticipate (article was more early marketing than real info)that users of this service will not be getting a high-resolution image on their cell phone, and what they get will likely jam with any signal interference, but it won't be too long until competition pushes for higher resolution, more video buffer, etc.
Can we expect ultra-high-resolution TV-style instant video eventually for everyone over a cellphone-style wireless network, or will it become more of a video-on-demand system where you chose ahead what you want to watch, then are notified when your show is available to watch? I wonder what the bandwidth will end up making plausible and simpler to provide.
Which makes me think - once people get to commonly learn video-on-demand or TIVO-style interfaces, which will be more popular? If providers can get past the nickel-and-dime mentality of providing shows on demand (see NetFlix for why losing this mentality helps), then I believe that style would be much more popular for people using cellphones who'd want to watch specific shows rather than the usual TV-zombie experience. So long as they can eventually have shows in storage rather than streaming them, it should be easier on the network too.
Ryan Fenton
Japan and Korea are on the bandwagon as well, but it seems like it's just a great way to drain your batteries. Article on mobile TV
I'm curious about how monochrome video would look as opposed to color on such a small screen. Although it seems common enough now for phones to have small color screens, and resolution is not the problem it used to be, might B&W be simply easier on the eyes? Might old movies now have a new niche market? Unfortunately I don't have the spare $ to find out for myself!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
Four cords. You forgot his DVD player, and his amplifier. . .
Ok, amongst the cords he would have to plug in are. . . I'll post again.
KFG
Great now I have to listen to laugh tracks and sports announcers coming from other people's phones when I ride the train or bus.
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
I've been researching displays for a project, and the phone-sized ones are 96x96 pixels. I can't imagine trying to watch video on something that low-rez.
I see this as the broadcast television industry attempting to prolong their outmoded form of linear content delivery. I don't want content delivered to me at a corporation's convenience. I want on-demand. I think that by offering this service they are trying to keep people from remembering that they will simply be able to download any content whenever they want before too long. So I can't see a service like this having any legs at all.
I have a hard time accepting that people are actually getting paid more than I am to conceive and implement ideas such as this. Paying serious money ($20/month) for the opportunity to watch a limited number of television shows on a 3-cm square handheld screen.
Every technological innovation goes through several stages:
1) First there is the long hard expensive period of research and development of the basic underlying engineering.
2) Then comes the conceptualizing of a possible product and/or application.
3) Then comes the stage when large amounts of resources are put into making a truly stupid product.
4) Then, the nadir. The point of absolute and total despair where the developers realize that they have spent all this time and effort into making something that is truly stupid, unbelievably expensive, and does nothing more than duplicate the function of a simple, common widely-used device that costs a tiny fraction of the new product.
5) Finally, the phoenix. The price of the new technology falls to the point where its secondary benefits make it worth as much and more than the simple common ordinary device that it is replacing. It then becomes the new simple, common ordinary way of doing a task.
This is seen over and over. The word processor replacing the typewriter. Steven Levy in Hackers writes of the despair of the guy who invented the word processor when he realized that he was using a $20000 minicomputer to duplicate the function of a $20 typewriter. Word processors started to make sense when minicomputers started to cost $2. The CD replacing the vinyl phonograph, the energy saver light bulb, the music synthesizer, the television infra-red remote, the list goes on and on. It's a process.
These guys are at the point where they have invested a ton of money to make a truly stupid product but haven't realized it yet. Let's all hope that they survive the coming crash. Yes, guys, you actually did spend millions on the idea that people would give you money to watch a inch-square TV in a television picture on their cell phone. But, cheer up! It's not the end of the world and eventually something really wonderful will come directly from it.
Someday.
$10 UK to access the channels.
$0.5 UK/minute to watch the show.
If they didn't do it then it would be tantamount to saying that a full month of constant connection to someone else costs them *at most* $10 UK which would make the rest of their pricing policies seem all the more outrageous in comparison. You can't be to obvious about how you grift people - if you want to squeeze blood from a stone you gotta squeeze *slowly*.
The sad part is that I have no doubt another company will be pushing "HDTV-cellular" within a year. 1080i on a 96x96px screen anyone?
Seriously, I've no intention of watching TV on my phone, but is this going to turn into a format war? 1080i vs 720p is bad enough, but now will we get competing standards like 96p, 240i, etc, for all the various models?
We're back to the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none situation here.
With the amount of new technology and features in phones today, their original purpose is becoming less and less efficient.
For example: on my old Nokia 3310, I pushed the 'Down' button until I found the person I wanted to call, then I pressed the 'Phone' button and it dialled the number. No difficulties there.
On my new, all-singing-all-dancing Samsung monstrosity, I must press the 'Menu' button, whisk past 'Camera' and 'Applications' to find 'Phone Book', press 'OK', scroll down to the person I want to phone, press 'OK' again, select the number, then press 'Phone'.
I can grasp that some people want to be able to snap pictures at ridiculously low resolutions, send those unintelligable photos to their friends, watch videos while on the bus, etc etc etc... Now, in this technologically oriented world, we are inundated with devices that do one job supremely well -- I have an iPod for music, a PDA for organisation.. Why is finding a phone that just phones such a difficulty?
"I just want a simple phone without net access" people, doing on slashdot?
On the other hand, don't let yourself be fleeced by greedy companies. TV sounds dumb, use them as wireless ISP instead. They don't want that because they want to be "special" so they can charge "special".
Keep jumping ship to the provider that has the lowest net access and create those "special" services with your own software on your phone. Java MIDP 2.0, Linux or Symbian. I'm talking about Europe.
At least that's my advice.
- -- Truth addict for life.