Streaming Media - 2008 Industry Sourcebook - (Page 41) my friends received some of the early test models before its U.S. release in April 2007. Father of videoblogging Steve Garfield (www.stevegarfield.com) has done extensive testing of the device and declares it one of his winners for 2007. He even developed a workshop on videoblogging in 5 minutes with the N95. Robert Scoble, former video blogger for Microsoft and PODTech, has been using his N95 to record CEO interviews, product demos, and conversations with wonderful results. So what is it about this device that makes it a 2007 winner for capturing video? First, the quality of video that you can capture with this device is quite incredible. It can record videos in MPEG-4 at 640x480 resolution at up to 30 frames per second. Mobile phones have traditionally captured video that is pretty cruddy and only can be tolerated in small bites online. The Carl Zeiss optics also upgraded the quality of equipment built into this smart phone and made for great still photos along with video capture. The next thing that makes this a clear winner is the ability to upload video online with Nokia’s built-in web browser and Wi-Fi integration. Not only could I shoot a video with great quality, but I could also upload that video to my YouTube account instantly. The speed of the process from video capture to sharing it with others makes this a killer phone. One of the other exciting features that N95 users started using in the second half of 2007 was live video streaming from their phones over the web. We will talk a little bit about some of those services in a moment, but websites like Qik and Kyte made for an interesting tandem with the Nokia N95. Hands-down, this is the winner for recording, sharing, and streaming videos from your mobile phone in 2007. Losers: Devices ANY PHONE WITH A SQUARE SCREEN We have been programmed our entire lives to watch videos on a 4:3 or a 16:9 screen. Our televisions and computers all seem to have these screens, so why not our phones? The traditional candy-bar-style phone and its ubiquitous square screen is not designed for watching video. With major moves to HD and widescreen formats, watching video will only become harder on these 2”x2” blocks of space. 2007 was the breakthrough year for widescreen format mobile devices, and I hope this design trend will continue. Woe unto you, device manufacturers, if you keep making square screens and forcing us to watch small video clips on even smaller areas of the screen. This last year saw quite a few mobile devices trying to force video onto tiny cubes of pixels, but hopefully 2008 will see more widescreen devices come our way. Winners: Services If 2007 was any indication of the future, mobile video will continue to expand rapidly, and we will need more content to fulfill the voracious appetites of consumers. While mobile service providers have made obvious forays into providing services to serve up videos, third-party companies were the big winners for 2007. One of the leaders in serving up video content on your mobile device is MobiTV, which provided some of the best content and delivery methods in 2007. MOBITV—BEST PAID DISTRIBUTION SERVICE MobiTV had a banner year that started with one of the first full-length TV program licensing deals for wireless delivery. In March 2007, MobiTV and NBC/Universal inked a deal to deliver NBC’s shows to mobile phones. This meant you could buy your favorite individual shows like The Office, Monk, and Heroes on-the-go. They also offered several ad-supported shows that aired over MobiTV’s existing channel structure. WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 41 http://www.stevegarfield.com http://www.ripcode.com http://www.ripcode.com/blog http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
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