RokPlayer wants you to watch TV and movies on your cellphone
posted Dec 27th 2004 3:40PM
Look, we're not going to get into the whole debate about whether or not people are going to watch video on their
cellphones (though we did keep ourselves busy on a recent flight from New York to San Francisco with a few episodes of
Undeclared on our Treo), but a British company called Rok Player definitely thinks that you will. Early next
year they plan to start selling MMC flash memory cards that come pre-loaded with TV shows and movies formatted for
viewing on your cellphone, though obviously the phone has to have an MMC or RS-MMC card slot, and their software player
is only compatible with a handful of handsets like the Nokia 6600 and the Siemens SX1. It's for the UK only (licensing
issues abound), and the carriers might not like it since it means people won't be signing up for their streaming
services, but Rok Player say they've already secured the rights to distribute a few dozen different British TV shows,
several Japanese and Bollywood films, and will be announcing deals with three "major Hollywood studios" next
year.
[Via PicturePhoning]
I think peolpe would definitely watch video on a phone with a big enough screen. One of the few things that's been annoying about watching movies on my Treo during the morning commute is that I get stopped a whole lot with questions about it.
"Is that an iPod?"
"Are you watching movies on that thing?"
"Can you watch DVDs?"
"Is that Simpsons show live? Is that a TV?"
I think a little education on this and it could definitely take off.
I don't much care about cell phones or tv or any other gadget...
I would, however, like to focus on the fact that I would love to put a certain part of me in a certain part of that girl holding the "gadget"... :)
rofl my waffle
I think the major problem with movile video viewing is getting content on your device.
Buying cards isn't the solution, people will just have a bunch of cards to throw away when they are done watching.
People need disposable content. They need a Tivo-like device to record the shows they want to watch automagically.
Until your Tivo can encode these movies for your personal video player, pda or phone and dump them to an SD card every night, I don't see mobile video going mainstream.
It has got to be EASY!
Remember when cellphones use to allow you to make phone calls to other people with phones?
All sarcasm aside this is really just what the worlds needs is another reason for some Jackass on the road to run a family of 4 off the road because he was watching a re-run of friends or something.
Form meets function and a cellphone is not a TV.
Does it come complete with hot looking chick? :)
Sounds like a cool idea for a service, but I doubt it would catch on in the mainstream.. we'll see though...
If shes not careful, she may step into that open manhole...
If shes not careful, she may step into that open manhole...
Hmm you can already easily watch video on symbian phones. Use smartmovie and the converter to convert most video files to xvid for your phone. A 2 hour movie for me is around 60 megs and I have a 512 meg MMC in my nokia 6600. Looks great and sounds great... these guys are just taking an already working concept and selling it.
Nokia smartphones have an ace up their sleeves that not many people seem to exploit. They are able to play RMVB movies, you could have a perfectly watchable rmvb movie weighing in at just 40mb. For my windows phone, I have to convert to xvid and make do with movies at least twice the size. bah!
Anyhow, forget RokPlayer. RMVB + a giant screen like the Nokia 7710 and you have a pretty good movie playing phone.
I worked for this wolverhampton Rok house related company for nearly a year. It is quite true what someone posted above.
It is possible to use any number of software programs to convert a regular DVD to a playable movie for your cell phone. The idea being promoted is not new, after all RealNetwork actually put the working movie viewer in many phones and Rok Mobile led by Jonathon Kendrick was really just relicensing the same software.
Nothing too new there. If you really want to get good picture quality, apparently there is free linux software that does an even better job than the QuickTime Converter that Rok was using.
pleasa send information about mobile vedio convertor