Watch Google Videos on your Smartphone/PPC

[Guest lllr]

From FierceDeveloper:

To show off the capabilities of MercuryXMX's mobile video APIs, BusinesSMS has a created dittybop.com, a site that allows users of nearly any phone to download a video off Google Video. TO see it in action, go to http://www.dittybop.com on your device.

The only problem is once you select "watch", it does not tell you when the video transcoding is finished. You have to refresh the screen to see a link to download a WMV version of the Google video. It would be better to have a streaming version, but, all well. This is a good alternative until YouTube links deals with all carriers besides just Verizon.

lllr

[Guest David Harrington]

Hi lllr,

Our demonstration is specifically designed not be a 'streaming' one - but you raise an interesting point as Windows Media devices support streaming video by default. WMV transcoding was added as a last minute decision to cater for non-3GP handsets.

The non-refresh of the pages is a pain, but this site is just a demonstration. We're looking at adding WML timers to those pages that support it and meta-refresh to Windows devices that may also support this. Ideally, the transcoding would be done on stupidly fast machines where the wait time would be neglible, but realistically all the video would already be transcoded and available in 3GP/WMV format already :)

Thanks for giving our demo some attention and we appreciate your comments!

David Harrington

busineSMS.com Software Support

From FierceDeveloper:

To show off the capabilities of MercuryXMX's mobile video APIs, BusinesSMS has a created dittybop.com, a site that allows users of nearly any phone to download a video off Google Video. TO see it in action, go to http://www.dittybop.com on your device.

The only problem is once you select "watch", it does not tell you when the video transcoding is finished. You have to refresh the screen to see a link to download a WMV version of the Google video. It would be better to have a streaming version, but, all well. This is a good alternative until YouTube links deals with all carriers besides just Verizon.

lllr

[Guest lllr]

Thanks for responding. It is really great to see the companies developing this type of technology also reading comments from users.

BTW David, is your technology being used by Verizon to watch YouTube on Verizon's phones? I know they must be doing some transcoding since Verizon supports only WMV/VC1. It seems like what you are currently doing to play on Windows Mobile.

lllr

Hi lllr,

Our demonstration is specifically designed not be a 'streaming' one - but you raise an interesting point as Windows Media devices support streaming video by default. WMV transcoding was added as a last minute decision to cater for non-3GP handsets.

The non-refresh of the pages is a pain, but this site is just a demonstration. We're looking at adding WML timers to those pages that support it and meta-refresh to Windows devices that may also support this. Ideally, the transcoding would be done on stupidly fast machines where the wait time would be neglible, but realistically all the video would already be transcoded and available in 3GP/WMV format already :)

Thanks for giving our demo some attention and we appreciate your comments!

David Harrington

busineSMS.com Software Support

[Guest David Harrington]

Thanks for responding. It is really great to see the companies developing this type of technology also reading comments from users.

BTW David, is your technology being used by Verizon to watch YouTube on Verizon's phones? I know they must be doing some transcoding since Verizon supports only WMV/VC1. It seems like what you are currently doing to play on Windows Mobile.

lllr

Hi lllr,

Sorry for the delay in replying!

All the transcoding is done on our end - that's what our SDKs do (shameless plug here)

In a nutshell, we detect the phone and the carrier and convert the file you ask for to the appropriate format.

Verizon use proprietary technology based on their V-Cast service which is what they are using to launch and delivery youtube content. V-Cast is great but it really locks you in as a user and is completely unportable.

Check out a more detailed overview of what's happening behind the scenes at our blog at http://businesms.blogspot.com/2006/11/mobi...r-big-flop.html

While we do have carrier customers, unfortunately they are not using our tools for mobile video delivery, but the majority of our business is coming now from startups getting into the user-generated content space.

We've got a consumer product in the works (can't say too much just yet) that's going to bring this technology to the desktop in a really neat way to bridge the desktop -> mobile video user experience. Stay tuned!

Happy holidays,

David.