Video on the go

We talk frequently about “putting your office in your pocket”—using productivity applications on your Windows mobile phone or device. What would it be like to “put your TV in your pocket?” That doesn’t sound like a good fit at first, but watching big-screen programming on a small screen is a rapidly growing pastime. The research firm Telephia reports that 3.6 percent of U.S. cell phone customers subscribed to some form of mobile video service in 2006. That doesn’t sound like much, until you look at the fact that 3.6 percent represents a 198-percent growth over the previous year. However, that’s still a drop in the bucket compared to ABI Research showing that the number of subscribers to mobile video services in Asia-Pacific will grow from 24 million in 2007 to more than 260 million by 2012.

What’s it like? Well, it’s a small screen. So, if you were in the mood to watch a Discovery Channel feature about life on an African savannah on your mobile device, you might be disappointed. However, if you want to watch TV news, TV sit-coms, cartoons, sports, movie trailers, documentaries, and non-fiction programming, or even films that don’t rely on sweeping landscapes or high action, it can be an entertaining way to keep up with what’s going on or to enjoy a little downtime.

What you need depends on whether you acquire programming over the air or download it from your computer and transfer it to a storage card for viewing later on your phone or device. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of your options.

OTA programming is streamed to your phone or device in real time from an array of servers over the Internet, via a peer-to-peer network, or via your mobile operator’s network, as opposed to downloading the content to your device to play later. Streaming video is very bandwidth-intensive. To watch programming over the air (without annoying delays and stuttering):

You can obtain TV programming over the air in a couple of ways, and each has its advantages and limitations. Depending on the three factors above, you may be able to subscribe to an OTA service from your mobile operator or directly from an entertainment vendor. It’s important to shop around to get an entertainment service that suits you: what you like to watch and where you want to watch. Not only do you need a stable and strong signal from your mobile operator, but you and your phone or device also have to be within the mobile TV service coverage area.

For many mobile operators worldwide, video services represent a growing revenue stream as well as a competitive differentiator. In the United States, Verizon was the first to launch its own video entertainment service, V-Cast, in a select number of large cities, followed by Sprint TV, and then Cingular (now AT&T) CV service. The pricing is similar to cable service: a basic service and premium channels, usually but not always with pre-packaged programming instead of full shows. Most mobile operators have some exclusive programming, for example:

Mobi-TV—Unlike pre-packaged subscription “made for mobile” TV, MobiTV is a premium subscription service for live programming. MobiTV is listed in the Windows Mobile Certified Software Catalog because it has been tested against Microsoft quality standards for the Designed for Windows Mobile program. MobiTV offers prime time shows from NBC and boasts over 100 TV channels worldwide, although not that many are available in any one country. For a combination of English and Spanish programming and more than 20 channels, there’s MobiTV en Espanol.

Pocket Live TV—No subscription, no data plan—just download the software and access live TV (mostly news and weather channels) on your Windows Mobile phone or device with WiFi or 3G connection. What’s unusual about this service is that you can tune in to broadcasts around the world. On the interface, you select a country’s flag—this will test your flag-recognition skills—and on the next screen, you select the channel you’d like to watch. I found the experience a little stutter-y, but I was watching the BBC News and then a French Canadian station in Toronto from Seattle, Washington. (Pocket Live TV does not broadcast content themselves, but redirects your requests to publically available broadcasts; hence, they do not control quality.)

Slingbox for Windows Mobile—Slingbox is a TV-streaming device that costs about U.S.$150 and was designed for watching your home TV on any computer that has Internet access. With SlingPlayer Mobile software, you can watch your TV on your Windows Mobile phone or device. Having the ability to “place shift” as well as “time shift” can be an appealing way to have TV on your terms.

YouTube Mobile—There is now a mobile YouTube site where you can watch streaming videos and also upload your own videos via MMS. At present, YouTube supports only a small number of devices.

Livestation—Stay tuned—coming soon. Another Web TV service option, currently in invitation-only beta testing, is an interactive global broadcast platform using a peer-to-peer network and Microsoft Silverlight technology for the display. Livestation recently won the MediaGuardian Innovation Awards. Livestation, created by Skinkers Ltd., a communications platform company in the United Kingdom, along with Microsoft Research, is designed to deliver live TV channels over the Internet to a computer or to a Windows Mobile phone or device.

You don’t have to be connected to your mobile operator’s network or the Internet to watch TV or digital programs. Whereas the OTA options provide a screen of available programming from which you can choose, the downloadable content options are limited only by the size of your storage card.

Like Television—This service offers a monthly subscription membership or a pay-as-you-go rate to view a wide array of feature films, animations, and classic TV (complete with old-time commercials extolling the virtues, for example, of peanut butter’s then-new hydrogenation processing) on your computer or your mobile device. Some of the content is also free.

The process of acquiring content is straightforward: download the files to your computer, transfer them to an appropriately sized storage card, which you then reinsert into your device—and you’re ready to watch.

In an e-mail conversation with Willy Krause, one of the two smart fellows behind Like Television, I asked him why people watch Like Television on little screens. He replied, “A lot of our content is very good stuff. (Much of it has stood the test of time, after all.) Good writing is really important… and the writing back in the day was excellent.”

So who is watching what? Four or five times a week, they update their “Top Picks @ Like Television” feature, based on a rolling 30-day average. When I last looked, “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1962) were on the list. “Amazing Superman Cartoons” was in the fifth position. Krause noted that the top picks tend to be driven by current events and that many of their cartoons are very popular. “Animation’s glory days were in the '30s, '40s, and '50s.”

So what did I watch?

Krause reported that one-half of the traffic to the Like Television Web site comes from outside the United States. “Our usage is pretty constant all day long—and changes with the rising and the setting of the sun.” Adoption of time-shifting and space-shifting medium continues to grow worldwide.

If you weren’t in Cannes in October 2007, you would have missed the announcement of the winners of the third MIPCOM Mobile & Internet TV Awards, sponsored by the Mini Movie Channel, Thomson, and Yahoo!. This year saw a record participation of 280 projects submitted from 180 companies representing 38 countries.

Entries from Australia, Hungary, Hong Kong, Israel, South Africa, and the United States won the nine top categories in 2007. Among the winners: Japan’s Toei Animation company won best made-for-mobile or film channel with “Anime Comic,” and “Colorful EU” from Hungary’s Kodolanyi Janos University-Visual Workshop won best film shot on a mobile device.

Before you sign up for a mobile entertainment service, be sure you know what you’re getting and that you have the network and hardware to support your choice. Some services offer only clips and highlights; other services offer full-length programs.

Mobile TV expands the trend of “time shifting” and “space shifting” for viewing entertainment. Because we carry our mobile devices virtually everywhere, we can take advantage of an interwoven entertainment service, rather than a location-dependent (couch) experience. IMS Research predicts that by the end of 2011, nearly half a billion of us will be watching TV on our mobile phones.

What’s going to get interesting as the technology standards settle out, the wireless bandwidth and coverage areas increase, and our appetite for quick bites of entertainment grows, is how media service providers will make use of this two-way connection with us as we order up more “TV to go.” Stay tuned for “TV 2.0.”