Third Screen – Fourth Screen – Who Cares? It’s all about video on the phone.
by Mark Shapiro
Our team just returned from 3GSM Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Aside from eating tapas, drinking sangria and avoiding the pickpockets on Las Ramblas, we saw a lot of interesting and world-shaking new phone technologies and most of it revolved around video and television on phones.
Some say the growing explosion of video and television on the cell phone screen is the emergence of the third screen. TV being screen number one, computer monitor screen number two and the mobile device - cell phone is screen number three. However, those in Hollywood like Robert Redford and the Sundance Film Festival say that the cell phone is screen number four. They consider TV to be a screen, computers to be a screen, and then, movie screens in a theatre to be a screen. And then the cell phone would be screen four. But really who cares? I just want to watch my YouTube and AtomFilm's videos on my cell phone.
FYI - check out the Sundance video for cell phone contest winners Yes, we like to watch videos and TV. But more important to us here at Internet Video Magazine, we like to make movies!
Check out the latest video phones.
The new Nokia N95 is a great example.
You can create VGA quality video at up to 30 fps. It comes with enough memory to capture about 100 minutes of video. It also allows you to directly and easily find and download videos from YouTube to your mobile handset. Even cooler, you can easily upload videos from the handset to YouTube. Shoot em and post em…. By the way, it also comes with 5-mega pixel still camera for capturing high res images.
Is it a phone with a TV camera attached? Is it a camcorder with a phone built in? These two technologies, video and telecom, along with associated technologies like MP3 players, high resolution still image capture, built in radios and GPS, television receivers, 2 way live videoconferencing and game players, are all converging and merging. Even better, they are shipping with a lot more memory which means you can capture bigger and longer video files.
No longer crappy little video cameras, the next generation of camcorder phones look pretty darn good – well, at least for video captured on a small phone. It might not be good enough to burn back to tape or to show full screen on your projection TV set, but for web use and for email sharing, it works just fine.
Here’s the link at YouTube for directly uploading your videos - www.youtube.com
The Telecom Network Challenge
As the handsets become more and more powerful, they might be putting too much of a strain on the network itself. Many of use have gotten used to poor cell phone reception and dropped calls. With some of the new applications, like uploading big video and image files, a temporary glitch in the network is not a big deal. However, for real time video applications like watching live television or participating in two-way video conferencing, losing signal for a few moments or a minute could be quite upsetting.
Similarly, users of real time applications like GPS based mapping and directions, and interactive gaming will also be up in arms if the connection fails. Because of this, the entire network architecture maintained by the service providers and carriers is starting to evolve – new equipment and software platforms are arcing that will provide what is known as five nines of quality – 99.99 per cent up and working). This translates to less than 2 minutes of down time per year.
Companies like Enea, Emerson Network Power and others are working with the large telecom equipment manufacturers to create a new generation of telecom networks that can provide up to seven nines of quality – because end users like you and me will not stand for bad connections and poor quality. If our television connection dies just as our favorite team scores its winning goal, or while playing an interactive online game, our movies disappear into the ether, we are going to transfer to a different service provider with a better record of connectivity.
New Killer Applications for cell phones
Hopefully, the enhanced network can support many of these existing applications as well as many new and merging applications that will be of value to the cell phone user. A couple spring to my mind immediately. For example, an enhanced GPS based application tied into local maps and crime statistics that can tell you where not to walk in Barcelona by displaying a screen of high crime areas. Or maybe even more likely, a GPS based application hooked into real time airport info at your destination that tells you where your gate is and helps guide you to it, as well as providing accurate in formation about your flights delays and whether your plane is really boarding is not? Has your plane even arrived at the gate yet?
Let me tell you, I’d pay a few bucks extra for those applications even if I never used my phone as a camcorder or television player.
To learn more about this author, visit Mark Shapiro's Website.
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