Comments on: MobiTV for the Palm TX & Treo 600

Well I figured out the Handmark part - there is no place to register an account seperately, you literally have to buy something to create one (or rather go part way through the order process, right up to the page where you are asked for a credit card number to pay for your "purchase").

But you still got farther - despite the fact that it is Wifi (Internet) they have artificially limited the service to IPs they think are in the US. If you try to access it from say, Toronto (Canada), which is only 35 miles north of the state of New York, you get an "Invalid Geography" error.

Pity for them - I would have likely signed up for the service, ironically to provide me with a "portable TV" when I visited the US for conferences.

-As noted, to get a "demo" that plays our commercial and shows you what channels you'd get if you registered, cancel out of the screen that asks you for your Handmark account info. We will hopefully be adding some sort of free trial after the New Year, but the point of letting you try it out is to see what kind of throughput you get in your preferred WiFi environment. The quality of the commercial isn't even super high, but if it looks good, the quality of the live feeds should be that good or better.

-IP geolocation: It's not a bug, it's a feature! To give some background, we are a mobile/wireless content aggregator (think cable company). We sign deals to distribute content, provide infrastructure for watching it, collect money, and pay content providers from the proceeds. The rights we get for distributing content are severely limited, and are very geography and transport specific; just getting content providers to agree to distribute anything over WiFi was a BIG thing. Likewise, deals signed for the US market are not valid for Canada or anywhere else. We do have content that is Canada-specific, but we only currently make it available on certain phones, we will expand it as demand indicates. But we couldn't have launched this service without being able to prove that we were limiting our content to the markets in which it is licensed. Cable companies have the same problem, but have a lot more deals in the bag than we do. It's even worse for local channels; the rights only extend about 50 miles from the tower.

So please understand, limiting based on IP address is not a great idea we had when we decided to sell TV on the TX, this is the reality of how content works for TV in general. The TX is the first WiFi device in the world (that I know of) which has the option of a real cable-style internet TV service. That includes real computers. Also, one strength of the IP geolocation system is that when we do have WiFi TV feeds available for Canadian channels, you'll see Canadian TV in Canada and American TV in the US. You can argue that you'd rather have your "home" channels even while abroad, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. We do have some channels which are licensed in multiple geographies, though, so there will be some overlap.

-The content lineup right now is tailored to news/weather/sports, which we figure is what most people want to watch anyway. But to give you an idea, the Treo currently has 30 channels, which is a reasonable basic cable package. We add new channels all the time, and you will be notified every time a new channel pops into the guide. In time, it's actually likely that WiFi will have more channels available than cell phones do.

-Video streams at 320x240, 24 frames per second. Audio is basically CD quality, although it's mono at the moment -- plug in headphones for best results! This is better than most desktop internet video streaming.

-If the price turns you off, it's hard to argue with that. But it's all about perspective on what you're getting. Basic cable costs anywhere from $20-40/month. The average person watches maybe 5 or 6 channels of that lineup. We're certainly not done adding channels to our lineup, but let's say the average person watches 4 or 5 channels of MobiTV. You can watch MobiTV on your home WiFi or anywhere else you get a signal, while you can watch cable in your house. If you're happy with the quality and the experience that MobiTV offers, is it really that bad of a deal? Or is it just that we're not used to paying for media services on our handhelds? Also, remember that we are paying the content providers on your behalf, and that's where the lion's share of the monthly fee goes. We'd love to lower our rates to expand viewership, but there's only so much we can do.

Anyway. It's exciting to have this product out there, and the more support we get for the idea itself, the better leverage we'll have to get better and cheaper content, and the more satisfying the experience will be. Also, it's worth noting that we have annual subscriptions for our 650 product at a slightly lower rate, and will probably be offering the same thing on WiFi eventually. But I would encourage you to try it and just see how much you use it and whether you like it; you can cancel any time you want and your service will last until the end of your billing period (which is one month). Cheers and Happy New Year --

One question: Does the video stream adapt to varying bandwidth conditions (TX Wifi), and if so are you allowed to reveal the min/max bitrate that the service can adjust to.

If the Wifi service reaches Canada by early March (before the conference season) you almost certainly have 1 subscriber.

I had a feeling that the price was up there because the "content" providers were charging MobiTV an arm and a leg. Thanks for confirming that.

It's odd to me that the channels listed would want anything at all to pass through their content, as they already include tons of commercials already and MobiTV would probably only ADD to interest in watching their channels on "regular" TV.

The suppliers ought to license the content as though it were a commercial for their channels, rather than treating MobiTV as though Fox "News" had some value worth paying for.

If the content were commercial-free and a little higher quality, then perhaps $120 a year for access would be a doable premium. Access to Comedy Channel alone might even sway me - even WITH the annoying plugs and commercials.

The quality of the tv broadcasts streamed to your computer (through the internet) is quite good with the Slingbox and the Slingmedia player. And there are NO monthly access fees. You only pay around $200 for the Slingbox and then hook it up to your home (or other) cable or satellite connection...and plug the box into your ethernet (internet) connection, too. This allows you to watch ALL your tv channels through the internet.

I really like the idea of MobiTV, but I'm just wondering why users would choose MobiTV over Slingmedia once/if the Slingplayer for the Palm comes out.

As people have noted, Slingbox eats your TV, and you can only connect one person to it at a time, so two people living in the same house and wanting to watch at the same time, regardless of where they are, would need two Slingboxes. Maybe that will eventually change, but Sling is really on uncertain legal ground already and if I understand correctly, one of the key points that keeps them from getting sued is that this is for personal use and not about rebroadcasting to multiple sources. MobiTV is all about rebroadcasting, and we have just started adding features that are explicitly personal. Our next client (which is on Java phones right now and is coming to the Palm later this year) does pay-per-view channels, on-demand style programming, ringtone buys, etc. which are tailored to your subscription. So we're coming at it from a different angle but I think both approaches have their merits.

Another thing is that the Slingbox uses your home internet connection, and you can't count on good upstream bandwidth. We host our service and if we run out of bandwidth, we buy more. As for Slingbox integrating with home media libraries and with PVRs, that's definitely something where MobiTV is at an inherent disadvantage. But as our content lineup expands, it matters a little less whether you're recording something or we are; does it really matter if you're getting Friends from your TiVo or from our on-demand service? Arguably, it's better to let us do it so you don't have to.

So I hope that gives you some idea of where we're headed. I love the idea of the Slingbox and it will work really well for a lot of people, but it's not a magic bullet.

If you only have one outlet in your house, then you would have a problem when someone at home wants to watch a different program at the same time you want to stream tv to your computer...

I think the way slingmedia avoids any legal trouble is that it does NOT broadcast to everyone and anyone (like mentioned above). Only one computer at a time...it's only for personal use. But for individual users, this is perfectly fine.

I'm not saying one is better than the other...heck, I use both....I'm just saying it's an option and I'm wondering what MobiTV will do to compete with people that want to use the Slingplayer *if* it comes out for the Palm OS. True, MobiTV (as a company) is in the business of broadcasting to many users (like the cable and satellite tv companies). But to the individual user, the Slingplayer/Slingbox option is a very compelling one. It *is* more expensive up front ($200 vs. $10/month), but in order to be a greater value, perhaps MobiTV should lower subscription to $5/month, etc.

Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other. The companies are different by nature (one sells a box that let's users get a similar experience to the service the other company sells). I think it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few months/next year.

Also, I didn't see any way to configure a proxy setting in your app.

I agree with you, though, it's all about the content.... up to date news from several sources, late-breaking events I believe will power that market, with some entertainment content thrown in.

Anyway, good luck and are you in Vegas this week with the company?

Landscape/fullscreen mode is something we decided not to support for the first rev just because we're using the LCD Overlay for fast display of the video, and it doesn't operate in landscape mode, nor bigger than 320x320 because it was written for the Treo. We can render everything ourselves but not without some performance penalty, we just have to look at it a little more once we determine how much people want it. Also, all TV video (non HD) is 4:3 aspect, so the best you can do in portrait mode is 320x240, which is what we're doing. The picture at the top of the story has now been corrected to show how things actually look on screen, sorry for the confusion. Also, landscape mode requires a totally different UI and potentially different video feeds, which we are working on, so the best solution to get something out there quickly was disabling landscape entirely.

We don't allow you to configure proxies both because most proxies won't actually pass the volume of traffic we use and because there's no cached data which you will ever want to see again. We use SSL ports only, so as long as your router passes port 443, you should never have a problem connecting to the service without a proxy.

As for the S66, to my knowledge we don't support any Siemens phones, so I'm not sure whether the demo would have worked anyway. If it's a discontinued phone, it's unlikely we would add new support for it; my guess is that you're out of luck. If you can get into Cingular's vending machine, though, and it appears available for purchase, you can always buy it as you've suggested. But this isn't really my focus so you might want to e-mail our support staff for the official answer. Thanks --

Guess this confirms the phone supports it, but Cingular does not support the phone. And to think that my son's crummy V180 IS supported... argh!