SmartVideo Opens the Door for Mobile Devices

[Jerry Raia]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.smartvideo.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.smartvideo.com/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"It’s the ultimate in portable television. Actual live TV on your cell phone! Streaming TV programs that look like TV – not downloaded clips that take forever and only play for a few seconds or minutes. This is live streaming TV not the jumpy, out-of-sync “slide shows” you’ve grown accustomed to that look nothing like TV."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/p_live.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/><br /><br />SmartVideo has teamed up with ABC News, NBC Universal, Fox Sports and The Weather Channel, to name a few, to deliver live streaming video to mobile devices including of course SmartPhones. It's not free and as far as not being jumpy or out of sync, seeing is believing. :wink:

[jfreiman]

Well, I downloaded and installed the demo/trial software.

It installed easily (don't read the download/install instructions - I didn't) and was easy to locate in the Start Menu.

Once run, it loaded in the browser and once a video source was selected (News/Finance, Weather, Entertainment, Premium, etc) the browser loaded Media Player and began downloading and buffering video.

I chose "News/Finance" and MSNBC as my provider. I was expecting hard news with an anchor, what I got was a clip of the Tonight Show and another "entertainment news" program featuring the bio of Cameron Diaz. The content does include commercials - lots of them - likely the same amount as what you would get on real television.

The media is streamed at a rate of 25Kbps and the quality is OK. The video was WMV9 with mono audio. Not high quality by any means and I wouldn't recommend that you watch it too close to the screen. The video size is not full screen, it only takes up the "video window" and no more.

The trial is free, try it and see if it suits your needs.

If it had a real news anchor it might have been more interesting for me since I already download television programs at high quality to my Smartphone from my PC. Realtime NEWS would be nice, maybe the full, paid for version includes these features.

Interesting idea and I'm happy to see that this type of technology is possible. While playing back the video for nearly 10 minutes I experienced not jerkyness and/or audio dropouts.

[stevew]

I got the same live MSNBC that was on real TV just a few seconds later. Same with the Weather Channel. Worked fine on my mpx 220. I havent tried it yet on my sx 66. As soon as I put my sim card in the sx 66 I'll give it a try.

[jfreiman]

I got the same live MSNBC that was on real TV just a few seconds later. Same with the Weather Channel. Worked fine on my mpx 220. I havent tried it yet on my sx 66. As soon as I put my sim card in the sx 66 I'll give it a try.

I just did and confirmed the same thing. This is pretty neat. 8)

[jonburge]

After seeing an anouncement, I went to www.orb.com. This is a startup service with two month for free then about 10 bucks a month. It currently only works with mce 2004 or 2005, but I think they are expanding it soom.

With this service installed, you can stream live tv, recorded videos, music and pictures from your home tv to any internet connected device. I have the Sprint 6601 ppc and it streams the content through Sprint. There are visible artifacts on the video, but I can still read words on the screen. I have also streamed to my work computer.

Once you download their software and set it up you just go to their web cite and after you put in user name and password you have access to all content on your mce desktop, including live tv. Also, the music sounds pretty good so you can play any of the thousands of songs on your desktop without putting it on an sd card.

You guys need to check this out. I think they have a winner here.

[rzanology]

just installed it. I can't get it to see my audio or pics. the only thing that seems to work right now it my recorded videos. Do you think this is because im still on the trial? I think you're right though...this is a must for those of us with mce and ppc and ppc phones.

[Navec245]

I downloaded this to my SMT 5600. It states that this is compatible, though it apears to have been designed for WM 9. The quality on my device is pretty poor. It looks like the video feed is washed out. I am glad i am on a month trial. I will see if it improves.

[jonburge]

For Orb to find your media you have to log on from desktop, chose administration (or something like that) and tell it which folder to look in. It will not recognize networked folders or shortcuts, just local drives and files.