Tommi's reports from Wonderland

November 25, 2005 Offline video content to your S60 device? Posted by Tommi at 09:06 AM | Categories: 3rd party S60 applications

Tero Lehto wrote yesterday (in Finnish) about how the combination of Tivo and iPod is challenging Nokia's "TV phones". Good observation, although I agree with the commenters that real-time TV and offline video content do not necessarily compete against each other.

I think the buzz started from TiVo's press release "TiVo To Bring TV Programming To Apple Video iPod and PSP". Even though this feature will obviously be limited to very few people, I find the concept truly interesting.

So TiVo will start to bring TV content to iPod and PlayStation Portable. And apparently they didn't even bother to ask the permission from Apple and Sony. This makes me wonder: why won't they bring TV content to Nokia’s S60 devices? After all, Nokia’s S60 devices are selling at least as much as iPod, and three times as much as PSP (sources: Canalys, Steve Jobs). Sure, there are a couple of technical and business barriers I can think of. But think about the concept – and I'm not talking just to Nokia or TiVo - why not indeed. I would say, let's do it. Let’s remove the barriers.

Oh, did I get caught up in too vague future visioning? Sorry... Let’s roll up our sleeves now, and think what we can currently do with our own S60 devices.

In Oct 2004, my colleague Tero showed me an episode of the TV series “Friends” running on his Nokia 6630. It was a real eye-opener for me. I was stunned by the quality, and got convinced of the feasibility of real-time TV and offline video for S60 devices. Tero was using a 3rd party app called SmartMovie, and the video was in DivX format. Other similar apps include DVDPlayer by Viking Informatics and Mobile Media Maker by Makayama Software, but I haven't tested these fully. Anyway, you can rip a DVD movie to ~128 MBytes and watch it in full screen landscape mode.

SmartMovie DVDPlayer

Feel absolutely free to continue the list, and comment the apps.

Even though my first impression was a pure WOW, I have to confess that I don't regularly watch offline videos with my Nokia 6680. It just requires too much effort. Would my little brother do it? Maybe. Would my mother do it? No way. If we want to make people raving fans of offline video, we must make the whole process much more user-friendly.

Anyway, I believe watching offline video is not so far away:
- devices are getting better
- memory is getting cheaper
- content (commercial and user-generated content) is getting more easily available

Let's get to work and remove the final barriers.

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Comments

I'm using SmartMovie since I've bought my 6680. I usually travel by train for work, around 3 hours per trip, and watching a movie is a very good opportunity to spend my time while sitting on the train (using headpohnes of course). I could use a laptop with a DVD player instead of my phone, but I've still never found a laptop 10x5cm and 130gr weight... :)

There is something I don't like in mobile digi TV idea. New terrestial digital television network is expensive to build up so idea has been to charge consumers extra about watching the mobile TV. Normal TV license is already 194€ per year in Finland so paying even more doesn't sound exactly attractive.

The Finnish Mobile TV project and study revealed that "half thought that a fixed monthly fee of 10 euros was a reasonable price to pay".

The results are quite surprising. I think people involved have been more techie than average and I wouldn't draw too many conclusions. So many companies are trying to take their share out of my pocket that I rather buy slightly more expensive device and use it for free.

-MRKTNGman

I'm not sure how far offline video will get in terms of stuff that you encode yourself, although when there's a Symbian version of TCPP [coming in version 1.0 I believe], it may get more popular as there will be a free entry point and the ability to use a greater range of formats.

I think in the next few years that offline viewing through MMC / memory cards may grow in popularity. I think it solves the easy / content issues.

I remember seeing a demo of Nokia Charger (or similar) a while back and that essetially downloaded episodes of popular shows over night (a bit like pocasting). I always thought it was a more compelling offline media experience than anything else I have seen.

I guess part of the issue with the rise of Mobile TV will the need go away. Most users may not even be aware of the difference if Mobile TV just works. Certainly if DVB-H takes off I can't see ofline viewing getting that far.

On the subject of applications - it will be interesting to see what Helix 3 (in planning stages now - the open source real audio / video stuff) brings.

Any further link to TCPP? I can't find it in Google :-P

Links for TCPMP (sorry got the name wrong).

http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download

TiVo is a North American thing and unfortunately, Nokia phones aren't as big in the states as the should be - but iPod is huge. So TiVo went with iPod first, and hopefully s60 next!

But like you said, SmartMovie already does this. Hook TiVo up to your PC, grab a show you recorded and rip it via SmartMovie, then send it to your s60. Voila!

Keep up the great with the blog Tommi!

Just like Phil said, from TiVo to pc to phone is a good way. But you have to consider that not eveyone can get TiVo. So what other method is there?

I know that ROK Corp sells mobile content in the form of DiVX cards which is a good way or marketing movies, shows, music videos and the likes via RS DVMMC's. I got to sample their first movie which was the Shawshank Redemption.

What we may also see in the future is the ability to purchase already made content for our Nokia's in the same way we would purchase dvd's to watch at home.

I use SmartMovie a lot. It is an amazing application and essential for good entertainment whenever you want. But I feel that watching a full length movie on our phones can be tiring and uncomfortable because we can't just hold it like that for a long time.
But yes, offline mobile video is a very useful feature and a common user must be aware of it and its working. BTW, nice blog you got here.

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S60 Open to new features

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