Posted by Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] on 09/24/06 12:50

On 24 Sep 2006 03:45:13 -0700, "info@5-minutetv.com"
<info@5-minutetv.com> wrote:

>5-Minute TV has produced material for distribution via the web - the
>end user being mobile phone users (as you know there is quite a few of
>them).
>
>Some of our material is free other is pay per view. Despite encouraging
>downloads of PC and MAC downloads people are slow to pick up on the
>mobile download side.
>
>What are your thoughts? Is it just the principle of paying for material
>(25p - less than 50c) or is it that people don't know the
>technology/products exist?


I suppose it's a mixture of effects - are you aware that several phone
operators only permit browsing of "walled garden" content, i.e.
streams, pages and downloads that only they provide, and the user is
prevented from leaving their private internet area.

An example of this approach is shown in this news article -
http://www.cnet.com.au/mobilephones/phones/0,239025953,240064120,00.htm

The other obvious question is, assuming http downloads (from a web
server) rather than streaming from a media server - what format are
the videos in ?

There is a plethora of unsupported formats, which vary by phone
manfacturer and even network, making it doubly hard to get good user
experiences.

For example, many but not all nokia phones support real player, most
smartphones support windows media but not quicktime, some phones
support 3gpp video but not all, and so on.


Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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