Video On Mobiles & What It Means For Us
| Author: | Jack |
| Date: | Wed, 29/03/2006 - 10:54 |
| Category: | Comment > Distribution |
This morning, BBC News 24 carried a story about sending TV news to mobile phones. Apparently the good guys and gals at the BBC Interactive department have been looking at ways of sending TV news to mobile phones. They ran a test in Oxford. Pete Clifton from BBC Interactive said that the Oxford test "...showed that people would use a handheld device to watch the news in video and it's our plan over the next year to roll out more of these video services to good devices around the country".
I'm sure I'm not the only person who's cynical about "video on mobiles". I suspect the main driving force behind this development is the huge bill the mobile phone companies had to pay for their 3G licenses and now they're struggling to find ways to make consumers use (and hence pay for) the bandwidth offered by 3G. Video is great way to eat up tonnes of bandwidth.
But what I'm really sceptical about is whether or not people actually want to watch video on tiny little mobile screens. Personally, I struggle to find the time to listen to one or two podcasts a week and podcasts have the great advantage that you can listen to them whilst you're doing your shopping or navigating your way through the public transport system in rush hour. You can only watch video on a phone when you're stationary and able to give your full attention to your phone. I very much doubt I'll be watching very much video on my phone at all. I know a few people with video iPods and they never use them for watching video. Would you want to watch video on a phone screen?
This discussion is very important for us filmmakers because a lot of us spend a large proportion of our time and effort creating short-form pieces like music videos and short films. Some people have been saying that the video iPod and video-on-mobiles will open up a huge new market for short films and music videos. As someone who makes shorts and MVs, I certainly would welcome the introduction of a new market for these films but I'm sceptical that new market will be found on handheld devices. Personally, I think our best hope for finding new ways to distribute all types of films will come when significant numbers of people start hooking their TVs up to home-theatre-PCs. Then we'll see a large increase in the use of the Internet to distribute high-quality video to the viewer.
edeverett wrote: Thu, 30/03/2006 - 20:32
It seems like a market that would suit short films. If I let my mind run with it I can imagine a market where portable video streaming gives short films a similar level of exposure to that which singles get on radio. People could watch shorts on the tube into work, and name-drop them around the water cooler...
But the start up costs of digitally broadcasting mobile video are probably too high for anyone with artistic sympathies to be able to afford.
If it takes off we'll likely only be able to watch last saturday's top five Premiership goals repeatedly for every angle & adverts for Coke and Dell.
Zara wrote: Sat, 01/04/2006 - 12:48
There's no issue as to "if" it kicks off because it already has! If you have a camera phone (especially a Nokia or Motorola), look in the media folder, and you will find short films. Competitions exist for shorts to be put on mobiles, and the industry is gaining momentum.
People download and play games on their mobiles - to do this they must be stationary and focus their attention on them - so why wouldn't people watch video on their mobile phones too?
I too question whether or not I would actually choose to watch video on my mobile, but the technology is there, and it is very exciting for a short filmmaker.
edeverett wrote: Mon, 03/04/2006 - 22:29
I'm not sure that the technology 'being there' means that it has kicked off already. For instance we have the technology to be all making video calls on 3, but I've never known anyone who does.
I was going to say that I've never seen anyone watching a film on a bus in the same way people are often playing music from their mobiles, but on my way home today, I was behind someone in the bus queue who was watching a boxing match on his video iPod... So... err...
I'm not quite clear what we are discussing here. Are we talking about streaming on demand, broadcasting or simple downloading and playing back later? At first I assumed we were talking about broadcasting TV to phones, but Zara is talking about downloading a film and watching it later.
What's route is the BBC planning to go down with it's news service that Jack originally mentioned?
Jack wrote: Tue, 04/04/2006 - 09:02
"What's route is the BBC planning to go down with it's news service that Jack originally mentioned?"
"Broadcasting" news content to phones. Although I'm not sure if they're planning to use 3G or DVB-T (a version of the same technology that FreeView is based on but tweaked for use with mobile devices).
And my girlfriend started trying to copy movies to her video iPod last night, for the first time.
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