Watching TV – by phone
Sprint Corp and a Berkeley, California, company are bringing you the latest in tv programming – on your mobile handset.
For $10 a month plus a $15 per month sub to Sprint’s PCS Vision wireless data and Internet service, Sprint and Idetic Inc have introduced MobiTV which, "marks the wireless industry’s latest attempt to use the lure of digital entertainment to energize a lackluster market and sell more cell phones," as Benny Evangelista puts in his SFGate story here.
MobiTV uses video streaming technology developed by Idetic and Sprint is selling the service, that doesn’t include the price of the phone or normal cell phone charges.
Idetic co-founder and ceo Phillip Alvelda says the new cell TV service will catch the eye of phone owners who want more than a video game to "kill 15 minutes waiting for a bus or waiting for a train," Evangelista quotes hin as saying, going on:
"You’re not going to sit down and watch a full-length movie. But watching TV is better than sitting there and playing ‘chase the sheep’ on your phone.”
The video shows up on a cell phone’s colour screen at between one and two frames per second, "considerably choppier than the smooth 30 frames per second TV viewers see," says the SFGate report. "Also, there is a 30 second to one minute lag between the time a video shown on cable or satellite TV gets to a MobiTV-enabled phone."
So far, only owners of "select Sanyo and Samsung phones with color screens" can use the service, although Alvelda says the technology works with "other phones sold in the past eight months".
