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QuickTime On Your Cell Phone 186

Posted by timothy from the the-better-to-drive-with dept.
blamanj writes "Apple and DoCoMo are confirming that a new version of QuickTime is on the way supporting MPEG-4 images over 3G cellular service." Now if only these would make sense in the U.S. ...
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QuickTime On Your Cell Phone More

QuickTime On Your Cell Phone

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  • It's nice to see the world moving forward and advancing on these technologies. We need to move forward and continue to make new things that could be used in the future but still have some commercial viability now.
    It would be nice to go all out and build everything in the future but there may not be a market now and we all remember the great crash of 99-00.

    But, if I get access to one of those phones then I definetly will because places are starting to wire up that offer the media that you want..._now_.

    • Re:good stuff (Score:3, Insightful)

      by purrpurrpussy ( 445892 )
      Dude....

      The problem is that this is technology for the sake of technology rather than any actual practical use. Yes live video feeds are useful but not to many people. Emergency services, surgeons... probly. Me! NO! I have NO use for this AT ALL and neither do 99% of the population.

      IMNSHO The current 2G (2.5G) phone system and the handsets in use have NOT been fully exploited. There are NUMEROUS things that could have been done with that technology and ESPECIALLY the connectivity.

      To see how a device can REALLY be exploited look at the GameBoy - 10 years and still new stuff is turning up. Technology for the sake of technology is pointless without software to back it up and I do not see that happening.
      • Don't underestimate the "Asian girls who like to see Hello Kitty everywhere they look" market. Those people NEED this technology ASAP.

  • Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrunkenPenguin ( 553473 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @05:58AM (#4861133) Homepage
    Nokia's Communicator [nokia.com] cellphone has included RealPlayer for at least 1.5 years.

    • Re:Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:5, Funny)

      by Boss, Pointy Haired ( 537010 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:06AM (#4861156)
      How did RealPlayer install itself on a Nokia without the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Current Version \ Run ] to install about 3 billion entries in that start every time your turn on your computer, consume resources and pop-up random messages??

      The day RealPlayer respects my computer will be the day I respect RealPlayer.

      • Re:Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It comes pre-installed :) Another cool thing about the Communicator is that it also comes with www-browser. OS inside is Symbian and it's open for everyone. WWW-browser Opera has been ported to it.

        I wonder when will someone port Linux to it ;)

        • I wonder when will someone port Linux to it ;)

          I would rather count on NetBSD [netbsd.org]. What CPU architecture does this phone use?

          • Re:Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Here are some facts: "The Nokia Communicator 9210 is designed to be an integrated communications tool, functioning as a cell phone and providing features like fax, email, Internet, WAP, word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, calendar and contacts. The phone measures 158 x 56 x 27 (mm), and weighs 244 g. Dual band: EGSM 900/1800, with a 32-bit ARM9-based RISC CPU and 16MB. Symbian OS. Data speed up to 43.2 kbps.

            Memory might become a problem here, although from what I heard, the new models have 40MB of memory. I am no expert here, but I think that should be sufficient.
            • Ahoy all Linux and *BSD developers! INTERESTING technical question! Is it possible to port Linux/*BSD to this device? It would be interesting to know. The CPU is 32-bit ARM9-based RISC CPU. That would make it the first cellphone to run a Unix like OS. Boy, would it be cool to have Unix like OS running on this!

              • No, it would *not* be cool, since you wouldn't be able to make a single phone call anymore. And at least to that is what a phone should be all about...
                • I don't think you get the geek factor of this.. It would've been WAY cool to have Unix on this thing! I'd consider buying one if they ported NetBSD to it.

                  Who cares about phoning people? Another six months, and somebody'll hack a phone-program that will only phone out between 5 and 6 in the morning, and you'll have write the config scripts yourself. But hey! It's cool!

      • Re:Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:4, Funny)

        by dimator ( 71399 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:23AM (#4861198) Homepage Journal
        Amen, brother. You got to click through about a hundred dialogs just to disable the damn StartCenter or whatever the fuck their stupid resource-hogging tray icon shit is called.

        And they do things like "Are you sure you don't NOT want to NOT DISable StartCenter?" to confuse the pants off you, so that you accidentally click yes instead of no. Disgusting, really.

      • couldn't agree more on this. I hate that bloody app. I hate the way it seems to take over every file extension known to man even though that damn startcenter thing is disabled. It has decided that it is the default player for any audio CD's even though I specifically told it not to do that. Then it leaves the 10+MB worth of setup files in it's damn directory (even after uninstalling it!) just in case I uninstall it and ever want to use it again. And how the hell do you switch that stupid message center thing off?

        Unfortunately I don't know anything else that plays realmedia and rm seems to be pretty common on the web.

        If this streaming is going to become common on mobiles, then please, for the love of everything decent, DON'T USE REALMEDIA.

        • Re:Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Like someone mentioned earlier on this thread - Linux version of Real Player is completely trouble free. No ads, no popups, no messing with file extensions...

          Unfortunately I don't know anything else that plays realmedia and rm seems to be pretty common on the web.

          Well, I do. MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu] can play any modern mediaformat you can possibly find on this planet. It is also the most fastest and feature rich player there is.
        • Visit the Helix Community [helixcommunity.org] and download the Helix DNA Binaries.
          This pack comes with an application called HelixPlay. This player is crappy and not very user friendly, but it's small (~2MB compressed; ~5MB expanded) and has no spy ware. It's enough to view RealVideos, if you have to.
          • I'm wondering where the client binary files on that site are located?? I don't want to download the source code or register for that.
      • Real Player actually isn't that bad on Mac OS X. I've had it installed for a while now and have noticed any bad things. I refuse to ever install it again on a Windows machine because of all of the evil vile instrusive things it does.

      • Re:Nokia's Communicator has RealPlayer (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I accidently stumbled upon this while browsing real networks site: Real Enterprise Desktop [real.com] its basicly the same player without all the crud (advertisment, nags, etc) and it plays all the stuff normally. I think its ment for corporate environments where those advertisment enabled players wouldn't get installed by the it-section. And IIRC, it asked if I want it to start in the background on startup when I was installing it (thu I don't see a switch in the preferences..) Gained a little of my respect. Works for me.
      • /me Hugs his real player 8.

        Seriously I agree with you on this one, Real One is the bane of my existence. But luckily enough you can still find real player 8 still around.
    • comparing Real Player to QuickTime is like comparing a dodgem to a BMW M5.

    • /Me look at DoCoMo's new phone:
      http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/021 210/161/2u9fd.html [yahoo.com]

      /Me look at my 9210

      Comparing the Japanese phones with the Communicator is like comparing apple (pardon pun :) and orange.

  • I also wanted to add that video will be on the heels shortly as they're probably just going to use the same core as they do right now (which supports mpeg4).
    Course, bandwidth problems come into play but imagine the possibilities...can you see me now?

    • Re:oh yeah (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zwoelfk ( 586211 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:26AM (#4861205) Journal
      Course, bandwidth problems come into play but imagine the possibilities...can you see me now?

      3G phones currently support video playback and transfer. For example, he new J-Phone [cellular-news.com] even has video capture. So the interesting bit is not that it has video, but that it's in Quicktime format.

      From the article: Microsoft and Real incorporate Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in their file format, giving companies an added feeling of security when publishing their content. This, Jones thinks, could be a disadvantage for Apple.

      Two things: 1. Have you ever tried to pull data off a cell phone? Especially streaming data? Security through obscurity may not be a great method, but it sure is a pain in the ass. 2. Those people who have issues with DRM should take note. If Apple continues their No-DRM policy, these phones could become the Fair-Use-Geek's first choice.

      From the article: Analysts see the adoption of QuickTime by DoCoMo as a way for Apple to broaden its customer base and to have customers associate the QuickTime brand when they buy content.

      I don't see this as a very good thing. Video playback should be seemless to the user. I don't want or care about codec branding. What this probably really means is that there will be an annoying Quicktime splash screen every time I open up a video (in order to have me "associate the Quicktime brand") blah.

      [...] but imagine the possibilities...can you see me now?

      I don't have to imagine. When I get on the train and see twenty people in my car using camera phones, it creeps me out. It'll be worse when video is used everywhere. Who knows how many people are taking pictures of you, anywhere.

      • Re:oh yeah (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Alan Partridge ( 516639 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:47AM (#4861247) Journal
        QuickTime is NOT A CODEC, it's an architecture that supports HUNDREDS of graphics, sound and movie codecs - along with sundry other formats like FLASH 4, text layers, sprites etc etc etc. That's why MPEG-4 was based on it - it's fucking beautiful! So, if you 'phone had QT, you might be able to take a series of pictures, compile them into an image sequence and send them to a friend as an MPEG4 movie stream; or maybe compose a ring tone as MIDI and send it somewhere; or open a TGA or TIFF file, or a wav, mp3 or aiff file etc etc etc
        • Geez, raw nerve there?

          Okay, allow me to rephrase: "I don't care under what umbrella which codecs are supported." The point is the same. It doesn't matter to the user what you call it, they just want the features. Granted, all the things Quicktime can do are wonderful, but do we really needed it to be branded? Especially if it interferes with the user enjoying all those features?

          The biggest problem right now with these devices is the amount of memory available to the user. There's been a big improvement this year, but if you want to start working with big 'ol formats (like TGA) and editing little videos on the fly, we're gonna need more. And better UIs too. I can barely use the calculator on my phone, I can't imagine trying to edit anything.

          That said, if I could get something equivalent to Yahoo's Launch [yahoo.com] on my cell, I'd be stoked. (Before anyone mentions it, yes I know I can get streaming audio now, but I want the video too)

        • QuickTime was never ever intended for authoring actually all you can really do with quicktime pro that pertains to authoring is exporting movies in different formats, QuickTime is however my personal preference in media video media players because it is full featured and doesn't bow DRM.

          oh and if i any of you
          *scurries back to apple techsupport hell*
          -ever deal with someone who cant figure out how to use a mac? now that is scary
          • you can do EDITING in QuickTime Player - move, cut, paste, add, delete. Multiple video, audio, Flash, text, Sprite and meta data tracks are all addable and subtractable. You can turn movies into image sequences and vice versa, scale, shear, change volume and sample rate etc etc etc
        • > Microsoft and Real incorporate Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in their file format [...] This, Jones thinks, could be a disadvantage for Apple.

          It appears the assumption here is that not having DRM is a good thing. It may be a good thing for corporations, but it's NOT a good thing for consumers. I think consumers need to be more active in supporting non-DRM solutions so that corporations don't automatically assume DRM=good.

  • What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:03AM (#4861146)
    The only reason they keep trying to add such technology to phones is so they can continue to rip you off with their charges. Do you really want to pay air-time rates to watch tiny tiny tiny movies?

    Here in the UK the mobile phone companies need their clients to spend an average of £50 per month ($70-$80) just to allow them to recover from the enormous debts of the 3G licences they lumbered themselves with.

    My bill is much less than that a month, and I really don't intend to use any gimicky technology they offer me to tempt me to pay them stupid amounts of cash.

    • The only reason they keep trying to add such technology to phones is so they can continue to rip you off with their charges.

      No, you are being mistaken. Those charges are important indeed, however they are not the key issue. Of course, as you have already stated, movies on the cell phone are useless. Even if there was no charges at all, there is no reason to have such feature other than to "show off," while with those charges the situation looks like this: it is the most expensive and the least convenient method for watching movies in the history of cinematography.

      So why do they add such a useless functionality to they cell phones? Of course the most obvious reason would be to sell uselessly powerful hardware, but that is still not the most important issue.

      The real answer, and I say it as someone who has spoken with employees of one of the key software companies in the market, is to lock people with proprietary codecs and/or file formats. Because when everyone has only Real Video and Quick Time on her cell phone few years from now in the future, she will be much less likely to record her grandchildren family movies in Ogg Theora/Vorbis format, if she won't be able to watch them on her cell phone.

      You may say that it is not important in which format someone stores movies of one's children or cat, but it is very important to make sure it will not be convenient for people to use free and open formats. After all, this is what average people want, not freedom, not liberty, not even safety, but convenience. And when it is inconvenient to use open formats, and convenient to use only proprietary formats, they will try to make fees for making movies, or maybe even for every distributed copy.

      And here are the big money. Grandma will say "Oh, this is nothing 50 cents for every person I will send this movie to," but the recording industry with its legacy business model will be safe, as no one will be able to compete with them as an independent movie or music maker, without paying them money. And this is, people, how the monopolies are built and maintained.

      Please consider this issues. Because so far, the most popular attitude is this: "Those, who can give up essential liberty... Ooooh! A new shiny cell phone with proprietary file formats! This is so cool! Where do I sign up?!" This is sad, but that way, nothing will ever change. And this is what I sadly observe, even here on Slashdot.

  • iPhone (Score:3, Funny)

    by HaveBlue34 ( 142274 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:04AM (#4861150)
    Can you say iPhone?

    does this mean i can watch the twin towers divx rip on my toilet?

  • iPhone (Score:4, Informative)

    by iomud ( 241310 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:07AM (#4861162) Homepage Journal
    Should be interesting to note that apple also owns this domain [iphone.org].

    • Re:iPhone (Score:2, Informative)

      by byolinux ( 535260 )
      They recently registered iPhone as a trademark in the UK too.
    • This (iphone.org) is a moot point that has been in the rumor mills for some time. I don't see Apple using a dot org for a marketing domain. Nowe if there was a iphone.COM, that would be a different story.
      • I think this distinction is irrelevant. It may seem odd that Apple has registered a .org and not a .com, but that may be because their attorneys believe that owning one of these domains is enough to establish a legal precedent of some sort, which may be all that they wanted. IANAL and this does not constitute legal advice.

  • Pr0n (Score:5, Funny)

    by KecCu ( 614885 ) <Spook_be@yahoo. c o .uk> on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:08AM (#4861166)
    I guess this will give a whole new dimension to phone sex ...
  • Will I be able to watch my (legally obtained, of course) DivX movies on my Nokia soon? =)

  • New from doubleclick.net (Score:4, Funny)

    by fatgav ( 555629 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:12AM (#4861174) Homepage
    We at doubleprick.net are pleased to announce our new and exciting range of pop-up video ads for the new generation of mobile phones. Increase your hit rates with a multmedia extravaganza that your customers will look forward to receiving. The best bit is that your customers will pay the download costs for you. They will love you for it!! Enquire today!!!!!!
  • Sure it sounds pretty neat. I can watch video full color on my cellphone but did anybody ever ask for these kinds of features. Why do they think I own a big screen TV? This whole hype mobile operators want you to follow is just an extra argument to get the money out of your pocket into theirs.

    On the other hand it would be the ultimate gadget :-)
    • What choice do the operators have! They seem to be loosing money hand over fist (or rather have MASSIVE debts). The only successes they've had so far are voice communications and text messaging (which they COMPLETELY overlooked until it had already happened).

      They have to recoup money somehow. I suspect they'll end up giving this crap away for free! They've tried charging for voice messaging etc and nobody pays.

      I do however THOROUGHLY agree. I do NOT know who is going to be watching "movies" on their mobiles. If grandma wants to watch the kids kids grow up then she'd rather have a video or DVD she can watch at any old time (and over and over again). Are the phone companies going to store your video for you? I guess they must somehow.

      1" screen and a crumby piezo speaker... oh yes please.. there are enough butthead idiots out there with 120db ring tones and smalltalk to match. I don't want to hear anymore crap on the train please.

      I think this "hype" is to get people to buy new phones... which they often see mto sell at a loss.... go figure....

      arse...

    • I completely agree. I recently bought a new phone for my Sprint service (after the old phone decided it didn't want to work anymore). The 19-year old at Radio Shack showed me his Sprint phone, with the color screen and talked about how cool it was. Although it was cool, I could not figure out why I would need a color screen, when the phone would spend about 90% of it's time closed and the other 10% of it's time pressed against my ear.


      Quicktime on a phone kind of reminds me of the new BMW 7-Series. Has anyone else seen the inside of this car? It has a new computer screen that controls every aspect of the car (audio, temperature, etc.) with a touch-sensitive, menu-driven screen. It's a neat idea, except for the fact that only an insane driver would mess with touch-screen menus at 70 miles per hour. This basic problem makes a $70,000 car about as useful as Quicktime on a phone.

  • Video on a Phone... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:20AM (#4861190) Homepage

    Makes MMS look positively naff, why send a single picture when you can send a video stream ?

    BUT if you think about the bandwidth requirements of streaming then it becomes hard for the mobile infrastructure to support.

    20 million phones, say only 1% active at a time means 200,000 phones active, each streaming at 256 kilobits means 6400000 kilo bytes of bandwidth required. In other words that is 6.4 GigaBYTES of bandwith required by the mobile network.

    Video is a nice idea, and for low usage it works okay within a network, but either the quality has to be crap, or the network investment has to be huge to support video-phone technology over IP. There are better compression elements out there that could work at 64 kilobits, but that is still over a Gigabyte per second network.

    AND that is just for a country with only 20 million mobiles.
    • BUT if you think about the bandwidth requirements of streaming then it becomes hard for the mobile infrastructure to support.

      20 million phones, say only 1% active at a time means 200,000 phones active, each streaming at 256 kilobits means 6400000 kilo bytes of bandwidth required. In other words that is 6.4 GigaBYTES of bandwith required by the mobile network.

      Yes, but if we assume that this 1% usage rate is true, then that means that each person would be viewing (on average) 1 minute of video, every 100 minutes, or 15 minutes of video per day!

      Further, lets assume that this is true, and that the 256kbs thing is also true, that is 480 Kilobytes in traffic per person per day. Looking at current plans that is around 50Euro cents per person per day (at the cheapest rates), or in other words we are talking a 10 million Euro revenue stream per day.

      If this was possible, then you can be sure that the phone companies would ensure that the bandwidth was there!


      • My mobile usage is well over 15 minutes a day, normally around 1 hour a day.

        I totally agree that if people use this then the revenues are high, but if it is low quality at the start then it will die (ala WAP, its now good but people don't care very much) and the revenues won't exist.

        The problem increases when you consider that much of this is going to be cross-network interconnects so the efficent routing to average the bandwidth will be harder. I don't disagree that if they saw this money they would put the network there, but the issue is that the quality of network has to be very high before this becomes viable.

        MMS is being pushed because its got low QoS issues, as long as the message gets there its okay. Streamed video is a different issue as it requires a greater QoS than the standard voice call (you can still hear the voice on a poor connection, but a poor connection == no video) which will be difficult to provide at a reasonable cost.

        But without a doubt the mobile operators are going to have to get the biggest fattest pipes onto the internet, and have their own dedicated backbones to route traffic effectively. This is the internet on demand like no-one has seen it before.

    • "20 million phones, say only 1% active at a time means 200,000 phones active, each streaming at 256 kilobits means 6400000 kilo bytes of bandwidth required. In other words that is 6.4 GigaBYTES of bandwith required by the mobile network."

      Only if you route all traffic through one point, which would of course be terribly silly...

      • And you are counting 256kbps for a tiny screen, when, for example the biggest bandwidth codec in gnomemeeting (for video) is 64kbps. For 320x200.
        Doesn't seem unreasonable, for me.

  • Bang! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:26AM (#4861206)
    1. Select movie to download.
    2. Billed $9.99.
    3. Downloading...
    4. Downloading...
    5. Downloading...
    6. "I'm sorry, Quicktime has performed and illegal operation and will be closed. Please report this fault to Apple inc. Thank you."

  • Once again the porn industry is a technological pioneer.

  • US and 3G (Score:5, Informative)

    by JimBobJoe ( 2758 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:52AM (#4861260)
    Now if only these would make sense in the U.S...

    The Economist had a great article a few months ago about 3G around the world. Asia does lead the US in 3G, and both places are way far ahead of Europe. Essentially, Europe's insistence on one standard, which worked nicely for 2G, screwed the pooch raw with 3G, that, and the fact that Asia and the US didn't license out 3G, so European cell carriers had to take on debt for billions for 3G whereas no one else did.

    There's no doubt in my mind that Asia will continue leading in 3G...for the simple reason that while 3G is developing here in the US, it's been pretty hard to sell Americans on anything other than just talking on the phone. There is some cultural difference that makes Asians all giddy about spiffy 3G features, so it doesn't surprise me to see the newest and greatest 3G tech. over there.

    • Re:US and 3G (Score:3, Insightful)

      by spewn- ( 264750 )
      The article in the Economist is(in my eyes) misleading and holds false information..'why?' you ask..well since I own a 3G Phone myself, and have done for almost a year now..I can safely say, that yes..Asia is pretty much leading the field..but if there was a second place prize..it would be given to my local telecoms company.

      This is their little page [manx-telecom.com] about the 3G network on the Island I live on. Owning a 3G, and using it day in day out, I can make a fair assessment that the technology is limited at the moment, it's still all a bit of a novelty..the handsets hold little or pointless functionality, and it only comes into its own when u plug the little thing into a USB port on a laptop/desktop. At that point, u get a broadband connection on a mobile device..I'm sure as time goes on, and technology evolves..so too will the handsets, but the main issue for 3G at the moment is that no manufacturer wants to produce 3G phones. This is due to the fact that even on a global scale..3G is relatively unheard of, and it all comes down to the old supply-and-demand..there is no point in making what people don't really want.

      The US attitude is probably right at this moment, because 3G is nothing more than a toy..until it begins to get some fundamental uses rather than just to 'look cool' then its gauranteed to be successful..but at the moment..the 3G Flag flies with Asia :)
    • I was in Hong Kong recently. There are an AWFUL lot of people riding the subways with their headphones/earphones on/in, a cell phone in hand, and an MP3 player clipped to their jacket. (I didn't see many folks with a PDA too, but there were some.) Imagine any significant percentage of those folks using their cell phones to watch and listen to little TV shows to be entertained during the 5-10 minute subway ride from A to B. (Sports highlights, news, music videos, stand up comedians, short cartoons, etc.) This provides not only a useful service to the consumer - fill boring time - but provides a revenue stream to providers.

      I'll go one step further, imagine advertiser suppported video on demand via cell phone - so the consumer doesn't have to pay connect/data charges. Cell phones become mini-TVs supported by the same paradigm as current broadcast TV.

      IMHO, 3G, video and audio streaming via cell phones will really only take off in populations with large numbers of mass transit commuters, i.e. NOT the U.S. The cell phone becomes not only a comm link, but a personal entertainment center. In the U.S. our cars are our PETCs, in Hong Kong the cell phone is.
    • Essentially, Europe's insistence on one standard, which worked nicely for 2G, screwed the pooch raw with 3G, that, and the fact that Asia and the US didn't license out 3G, so European cell carriers had to take on debt for billions for 3G whereas no one else did.

      Actually the European carriers screwed themselves. The airspace was sold off in auction, and they bid each other up to stupid amounts. Having signed the deals during the height of the dotcom bubble, they're now stuck with it. Kind of a shame, but equally they did sign a contract with the government - I don't think they should be let off because they were stupid.

  • Hmmmmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @06:52AM (#4861261)
    Are there really more users who own 3G phones AND want to watch movies on them AND who will pay the horrendous bandwidth charges required than there are desktop Linux users who want to watch movie trailors? I don't think so.
    • True .... And how great would it be, that every time you pickup your phone you'll have to click later to that stupid upgrade question?

    • Re:Hmmmmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by matthew.thompson ( 44814 ) <matt@actuality.co . u k> on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @07:18AM (#4861316) Journal
      There may well be soon. Remember that the number of people who own mobile phones is numbered in billions.

      If the trailers are free of charge or minimal charge kids, in the UK at least, will use the service and then video phone to their mates to arrange to see the film etc. etc. etc.

      The issue here is for future market share available - not current market share. The estimates for increases in Linux desktop share are, I would imagine, far lower than the number of people expected to move to 3G mobile system in the next 3 years.

      By getting Quicktime onto phones Apple provide a way to sell their encoders and lever Microsoft's format off of the mobile platform.
        • I think the US is the only place where the stupid "airtime" exisits. In Europe, you DON'T pay for recived calls, toll free calls are free. Cell phones are just like anyother phone. I really wish the big players will wake up and adopt a similay pay plan.
      • The estimates for increases in Linux desktop share are, I would imagine, far lower than the number of people expected to move to 3G mobile system in the next 3 years.

        Well, that's what the telcos would have us believe, but from what I've gathered most 3rd party analysts aren't so confident. So far, 3G providers (in europe anyway) are horrifically loaded with debt and are desperately trying to find customers who are willing to pay huge amounts for what are essentially gimmicks.

        There are loads of adverts here telling us about all the funky things you'll be able to do with 3G phones - maybe, oneday. Everybody takes the piss out of them. 3G is by no means a certain bet.

        Compared to Linux which has a huge amount of interest, and a lot of people saying "Well, I would use it but there's still 1 problem left......" I think it's pretty likely that Linux will grow faster than 3G in the next few years, simply because it has a lot more people interested in it.

        Don't get me wrong, 3G will happen, but not after some abortive starts and it'll take a lot longer than we think.

  • Great quote: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @07:43AM (#4861376) Journal
    Microsoft and Real incorporate Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in their file format, giving companies an added feeling of security when publishing their content. This, Jones thinks, could be a disadvantage for Apple.

    "The big hurdle that QuickTime has to clear is that it isn't a nicely bundled solution of video creation management and security," said Jones. "They don't have some of the content management and DRM capabilities that Real and Microsoft have."

    Everyone else calls that a plus. No DRM, no security, less crap to deal with.

    On another note, someone was asking whether there was truly a greater demand for this than a Linux port of QT. Perhaps there is, but also, this could be a way to pave the road for video phones.

  • where's the real innovation? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I like advanced technologies being put into common use appliances, but I'd like more being able to play with these devices, program them, hack them where possible and customize them.
    Current cellphones are plain and simple pieces of crap. Here are just some examples of some real innovation I'd like to see in newer phones.

    Why one does have to keep 5 remotes, or buy an uber expensive learning one, when any cellphone could include $ 0.5 circuitry and some lines of code might be added to make it able to learn and keep in memory IR signals?
    How about including also a RF module that will open my garage door with the codes I already stored in its memory?

    Why do trekkers/workers have to use walkie talkies when cellphones may be configured to allow 1v1 and switched 1vMany short range communication without any need for a repeater?

    Why does one have to fight against the expensive cable/docking station when one mini USB port in a cellphone would both give standard physical I/O capabilities and enough power to recharge the batteries simply by connecting it to a PC?

    Ok, and as a techie I'd like to program my cellphone in C and its devices in asm.

    Make a cool device and I'll buy it, but if you try to charge me for a "service" I already do for free on my computer just because the cellphone it's smaller, you're losing your time.
  • As I tried the day before WMA streaming, I could enter URLs (via the spacialaudio plugin for Winamp) into the stream and whoooom, Windows Media Player opened Internet Explorer and went to the sent URL. Isn't this one of the first possibilities to push the webpage to the user (well besides other nasty popups)?

    IMHO this is a huge security gap (imagine a bunch (well let's say 10000) of WMA listeners while you send them all the same URL, nice DDoS he?) and should not be possible. Blame the WMA format?
  • So the player would be pre-installed, but how is it that the fattest content of all is the right candidate for phone optimization?
  • QuickTime isn't MPEG4 and QuickTime streams are intrinsically not fully open because they are a container for proprietary video streams. Apple also keeps confusing the issues with their claims that MPEG4 is somehow based on QuickTime; there is some historical relationship, but they are different.

    For truly open formats, you have to stick either exclusively to the stuff that is standardized by a standards body, or you have to go with a fully free and open codebase. 90% open doesn't count. Open stream format with the possibility of proprietary codecs doesn't count.

    Apple's efforts with QuickTime are really no different from those of Real or Microsoft: they want to dominate multimedia with a format that they control. Their confusing statements about openness and relationships with MPEG4 are simply attempts to muddy the waters and confuse the issues. The best thing consumers can do is to say "no" to all of them--because otherwise consumers are going to pay the price in the long run. There are plenty of alternatives--we don't need Apple, Microsoft, or Real for multimedia.

    • There are plenty of alternatives--we don't need Apple, Microsoft, or Real for multimedia.

      And that would leave us to view our multimedia content with...?
      • MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, MJPEG, the h.XXX standards, Ogg, and a few others. Those formats are open, documented, and have open viewers and servers available.
        • Such as Apple's Quicktime?

          It can support MPEG4, MJPEG, and h.XXX out of the box, and has Ogg and MPEG2 components (for both encoding and decoding) and can decode MPEG1 without any special effort.

          What, exactly, is your problem? Quicktime, I believe, *is* documented. The only thorn is the Sorensen codec... which is just a codec, and not a container and not a platform.
          • Apple's QuickTime is a container format for multimedia streams; it is NOT a digital video format by itself. If I tell you that something is a QuickTime stream, you will have no idea whether you'll be able to decode it. In fact, you will have no idea whether it's even video.

            If these cell phones use "QuickTime", including the ability to use new codecs, then they are effectively using a proprietary format. If they use what QuickTime usually refers to, the QuickTime stream format with Sorenson, then they definitely are using a proprietary format.

            If the cell phones use MPEG4, then it's misleading for Apple to claim that they use "QuickTime", which would imply that Apple has some sort of special power over the format; if all they actually use is MPEG4, then Apple is just one of many companies that can provide software or hardware for it.

            So, you are right that the QuickTime stream format is open and document; QuickTime just isn't a open streaming video format by itself because it doesn't define how the video is actually encoded.

    • Apple also keeps confusing the issues with their claims that MPEG4 is somehow based on QuickTime; there is some historical relationship, but they are different.
      Last time I checked, they both share exactly the same container format. The difference is simply the default encoders they choose to use--and seeing as QuickTime can use the MPEG4 codecs, even that difference can be eliminated.
      • And your point is? A small part of the MPEG4 standard is based on an Apple stream format. That doesn't make MPEG4 the same as QuickTime. Most of the MPEG4 standard is about completely different things from a stream standard, things that just aren't in QuickTime at all. And I still can't play general QuickTime streams with a non-proprietary decoder.

        What it comes down to is that either Apple is lying when they are saying that some cell phone will incorporate "QuickTime", because what it actually includes is MPEG4, or the cell phone actually includes QuickTime and the content cannot be generated with an MPEG4 encoder.

    • Re:tired of proprietary formats, muddied waters (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Apple also keeps confusing the issues with their claims that MPEG4 is somehow based on QuickTime; there is some historical relationship, but they are different.

      Tell me about it! And it's not just Apple confusing things: even those bastards at MPEG [telecomitalialab.com] are trying to muddy [telecomitalialab.com] our otherwise-clean waters:

      The design [of the MPEG-4 file format] is based on the QuickTime® format from Apple Computer Inc.

      I'm sick of this goddamned FUD!

  • Quicktime (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who wants a phone with pop-ups and nag screens? I just uninstalled Quicktime yesterday when I realized it now has something that runs automatically when I boot. Uninstall was faster than tracking down and disabling that "feature".
    • No you didn't. That's why you posted as Anonymous Coward. What you really did is go look at some more Quicktime trailers and you couldn't figure out how to disable hotpicks, so you thought you'd vent here.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @10:11AM (#4862134)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • AT&T GPRS vs QT6 (Score:3, Informative)

    by scotty1024 ( 584849 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @10:11AM (#4862135)
    AT&T thinks they have this capability today in the US with their GSM based GPRS service. But as I see it AT&T has two challenges with customers using something like a QT6 player on a Tungsten via Bluetooth to watch movies. 1. Their GPRS network has still never delivered even 57,600 bits per second to me. 2. At $0.01 per 1024 bytes a two hour movie delivered via their network would cost me around $500 if they were capable of delivering 57600bps!

    • Re:AT&T GPRS vs QT6 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dorky ( 259801 )
      True, true. Downloading meaningful video streams to a cell phone with GSM or even GPRS is not going to be feasible any time soon because of bandwidth restrictions. (Although we have chalkers here, and that WiFi SD card...)

      But convergence is here already, even if it's not realtime convergence. C'mon over to my house, and I'll show you how I do it on my TMobile PocketPC phone.

      1) Record films/shows to PC with WinTV and SnapStream. (Alternately, download saved shows from TiVo with WinTV and WinDVR.)

      2) Use SnapStream's Pocket PC converter or Windows Media Encoder to munge down the size of the file.

      3a) Enable SnapStream server. Leave house.

      4a) Dial into ISP from PocketPC Phone, connect to SnapStream server, and stream video files (takes a long-ass time).

      OR

      3b) Save shrunken .WMV files to phone's SD expansion card.

      4b) Leave house.

      5) Watch whatever the hell you want wherever the hell you want to in Media Player. Yesterday, rather than leafing through germ-laden back issues of Good Housekeeping as I whiled away an hour in the doctor's waiting room, I watched "The Sopranos", while at the same time waiting on hold with the veteranarian's office.

      Oh, and then at the vet's office, I read an eBook.

  • Argh. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xmutex ( 191032 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @11:22AM (#4862757) Homepage
    Look, I want to make phone calls with my cell phone. I want to sometimes receive them.

    This is all. I don't want my cell phone to take pictures, play games, play QuickTime movies, launch surface to air missles, sing to me on lonely nights, do the jig, reminisce about the halcyon days of yore, and so on.

    All this whizz bang cell phone "technology" is obnoxious and a textboox example of feature creep.

    STOP THE MADNESS!

    • Re:Argh. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by superdan2k ( 135614 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2002 @12:32PM (#4863361) Homepage Journal
      I dunno...the abitily to launch surface-to-air missiles with a cellphone would be pretty groovy. (Obligatory USA PATRIOT Disclaimer: I am NOT advocating or planning any terrorist activities.)

      Actually, I'm of the opinion that extra features in a cellphone generally suck. I just cancelled my web access ($5/month) on my SprintPOS (er, PCS) phone because I never use it.

      Right now I want exactly TWO things from my cellphone: decent coverage area, and Bluetooth capabilities to I can use my iBook to surf from wherever and keep all my phone #s straight between my Palm, iBook, and cellphone (because I have so many floating around, I never remember them all).
  • I'd hate to have to click through that "Upgrade Now" nonsense every time I wanted to see a little vid on my phone.

  • Incredibly misleading headline. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by robla ( 4860 ) on Thursday December 12, 2002 @01:01AM (#4868647) Homepage Journal
    The headline should be "3GPP support to your cell phone", and it's not all that surprising, but it's very good news for everyone (including RealNetworks, where I'm from). We've been doing a lot of work in the 3GPP [3gpp.org], and it's great to see that work paying dividends. If you really want to find out what this stuff is about, look at the spec [3gpp.org] (and yes, I hate the fact that these are Word docs in zipfiles as much as anyone).

    Much of the confusion around this subject comes from a lack of understanding of the difference between .mov, .mp4, and .3gp. DoCoMo's announcement was good news for 3GPP, and given the support throughout the Helix platform for 3GPP formats, codecs, and protocols, we view it as great news for the Helix Community.

    As another poster pointed out, only a piece of 3GPP is based on Quicktime is the container file format itself (the bit that says "here's a 3000 byte chunk of data with this 32bit codec identifier"). Another piece (the protocol) is based on work RealNetworks pioneered (RTSP). Moreover, the Helix DNA Client supports the 3GPP specification today.

    RealNetworks added MPEG-4 and 3GPP support 10 months ago with the RealSystem Mobile Server (see press release [realnetworks.com]),
    and MPEG-4 support will be included in the Helix DNA Server when it is released in the near future.

    As for the speculation about Apple releasing 3GPP encoding support, we would welcome them to the party. In early November we announced that a version of our Producer product for creating 3GPP content will ship in Q1 of 03. (see press release [realnetworks.com]) Moreover, we offer our encoding framework as open source (and naturally open APIs) so that you can add support for whatever format you want to. We've given you a head start by implementing Ogg Vorbis support.

    Again, the new phones sound great. Lots of new devices for Helix encoders and servers to work with.

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