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Fuzzy Logic Vodafone customers get ninemsn TV channel - free
Fuzzy Logic Vodafone customers get ninemsn TV channel - free | Vodafone customers get ninemsn TV channel - free |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 28 May 2007 | |
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From memory, 33.6kbps desktop modems were still to come, or have fully replaced 28.8kbps models, with 56kbps modems and the widespread availability of broadband, let alone GPRS, EDGE, EVDO, UTMS and now HSDPA far off into the future. Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
Even back then, at these speeds, online video was around. Sure, it was the size of a postage stamp, and sometimes even in black and white, but it existed. I should know – the company I was working for at the time had me creating a one minute video news bulletin, through a black and white Connectix Quickcam camera (plugged in through the parallel port), embedded into a PDF file and emailed to hundreds of subscribers – and that was late 1995. Fast forward to 2007, and 3G’s much faster speeds are commonplace, with 3.5G networks already delivering speeds of around 500kbps to 1.5Mbps. Mobile phones have vastly improved over the past decade too, capable of so much more than just phone calls, with today’s phones impressive mix of features, form factors and style – and mobile video is rapidly maturing to become commonplace. The colour screens of today’s phones have also dramatically improved, able to display at least tens of thousands, if not millions, of colours, play video, live TV channels, games and display text and numbers with the sharpness and clarity today’s LCD screens provide. Many phones now sport screens of 2 inches or even larger, making mobile video more enjoyable to watch. So it’s no surprise to see mobile video being a category that has grown over the past few years. Customers of all four major phone companies in Australia on 3G or better networks have access to a range of mobile video content that is easy to dip into and out of at affordable pricing, often with an option to pay a cheap monthly rate to allow access anytime, a cheap daily rate (such as $1 per day) if your use is that sporadic or you just want to taste test a channel, while some channels are offered free of data or viewing charges. In the future, Australia will have mobile phones that can pick up digital TV broadcasts, as is already the case overseas, delivering better quality and not using up data on the cellular network, but the spectrum is not yet available and so hasn’t been put up for auction. Even so, the lack of a digital TV broadcast option hasn’t stopped phone companies from offering mobile TV channels, just as phones like Nokia’s N95 now offer inbuilt access to downloading Reuters news video clips and a changing daily selection of YouTube videos. Video, and especially mobile video, is slowing expanding to offer many more choices, both of content and of viewing platforms, in a virtually ‘on-demand’ whenever you want way. About the only thing hindering use of mobile video to some degree is battery life – today’s phones are thinner than ever, meaning thinner batteries, yet we want them to power today’s ever more powerful gadgets. If you watch a lot of mobile TV on your phone, you’ll drain the battery relative quickly – another reason why a lot of mobile content is short and bite sized, not only to reflect the fact you might only have a few minutes or less to tune in, but also because watching a one hour show on your phone (or a series of shows for one hour) will chew into its talk time. ninemsn TV is just one of the many professional content companies specifically modifying their content to suit today’s mobile requirements and environment, and while this deal is exclusive to Vodafone for now, there’s no reason why ninemsn wouldn’t want their content to be more widely available in the future, as would any content creator, especially if they are being paid for it, whether through subscription fees or through advertising or even both. So, the revolution won’t just be televised on pay-per-view, but you’ll be able to watch it on your mobile phone, too. {moscomment} |
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