Video Streaming

Now I’m one of those people who don’t actually make many calls or SMS using my mobile phone. I prefer my device to be an all singing all dancing device. As when I travel I like to keep what I carry to a minimal. Hence why I got the N95 I guess.
I don’t need to take my iPod or MP3 player with me, don’t need my Camera, nor do I need my portable DVD player.
Take note on the last device. No I don’t want to watch a whole film on my N95, I’m sure I can, what I want to do is watch short clips, an episode or two of Family Guy or any other sitcom which I might like to watch on my journey.

I’ve been searching the net for a little while now looking for sites which would stream videos to my N95. So far I’ve come across quite a few sites which have made an impression on me. They may not have as much choice as YouTube, Dailymotion or Metacafe, but you can’t stream the videos to your handset from those sites yet as the Flashlite player doesn’t support it, Something I hope someone out there could remedy soon.

Ther are two sites you can subscribe to via the Nokia Video Centre application in the N95; YouTube Beta and Reuters I will review YouTube Beta in this post.

The following sites have caught my attention and I found I’ve spent some decent time on them (all for researching purposes I assure you):

• Zoovision
• MovieDigital Mobile
• Freebe TV
• TinyTube
• YouTube Beta – included in N95 Video Center
• Mobile9

ZooVision

This is one of my favourite out of the lot, The site is well designed, it’s got some good graphics, but not too much to slow down your browsing via slower connections. The videos are catalogued into categories and there is also a Top Ten section for the most viewed videos. The content could be added to as there isn’t that much on there to browse through, but the overall design and the fact it worked every time I visited deserves praise.

MovieDigital Mobile

The site is virtually text based, the ability to only sort videos in alphabetical order or posted date order leaves a lot to be desired. Some videos do not work either, which I find surprising as there is a link to which I presume is their file hosting service, where you can upload your own videos to stream and watch on your device via the MovieDigital Mobile site.

FreeBe TV

This site I was pretty excited about, watching streaming TV channels on your mobile device, awesome! So here I decided to register and get my link etc. I looked at the listing of the channels; Monkey News Network, TV Bloopers, Kung Fu Tv etc…
Not your most popular channels to say the least, but what the heck I nosedived in.
The site is mostly text based with only the FreeBe TV logo at the top. Below you find the channels to navigate your way through them to find what you desire. As usual I navigated to the Top Ten section.
The videos themselves were poor quality, encoded at low bitrates, they did not look too good on the big N95 screen.
The concept and potential for this is very good, this site just needs a bit of quality and some interesting channels to hit it off.

TinyTube

TinyTube basically catalogues and reformats videos found on other popular sites like Google Videos, Youtube etc and streams them to your device in a compatible format, mostly 3GP. The quality of the videos themselves are pretty good. There is a choice of browsing via Genre from a specific site or using the search function to look for videos of your choice. The site is not heavy on graphics so it would be suitable for 3G streaming.

YouTube Beta

Everyone knows what YouTube is, if you don’t where have you been?
YouTube Beta is obtained by subscribing via Nokia’s Video Centre site, after which you will get a new YouTube Logo in your Video Centre menu.
Clicking on it will lead you to a thumbnail based list which refreshes (to what and where I do not know) revealing a list of videos, Just browse and select one to play. As you’d expect, this is pretty easy to use and the quality of the videos are top notch also. I hope this gets bigger and better and YouTube Beta becomes finalised, because this could take the boredom out of any situation and perhaps create some trouble for potential slackers.

Mobile9

This might sound strange as I’m an admin on the site itself and the fact I’m on there everyday. I guess I’ve taken it for granted, but I just happened to browse through the videos section of the site to find a huge selection. Videos can be downloaded in either 3GP or MP4 format to your PC or your handset for your viewing pleasure. Looks like I’ll be in there for a while as there is a whopping 124 pages to go through.
I’ll be honest and let you know, it’s not the best site suited for browsing via your handset, as it wasn’t designed for that, but with the N95’s browser it’s pretty easy, you just need to zoom out to 50% to make it manageable.

In general I think streaming video/TV needs a kick push, it’s got great potential, especially with Flash and mp4 moving forward with smaller file sizes and great compression methods. I hope in a years time we still aren’t sitting around searching the internet to find videos to stream to our devices to entertain on our journey to work or just something to pass the time.

Firmware Updated

So after waiting a few days I decided to use Nemesis Service Suite to change my product code to 0536062 EURO1 – Plum which I got from a thread at AllAboutSymbian.
After having trouble for a little while where the Nokia Updater kept disconnecting my internet connection it started to download the new firmware update, all 113MB of it!!

I’ve taken some screen shots of the process in chronological order and a screenshot of the new firmware on my phone.

After the upgrade was finished, I restored the backup from my PC. I got the contacts back no problems, but some of the software installed were missing. Y-Browser, SkyForce, Nsysinfo, Screenshot, Best Taskman, Large Time Screensaver all which had to be re-installed. I’m sure this was due to them being installed in the phone memory, but should the backup not include them?

I also noticed some new icons which appeared, although this may be down to my operator branding, as I had the T-Mobile icons before. PTT and IM icons appeared, none of which I will be using personally, but it’s nice to know I have them there.

I haven’t yet seen the effects of the new firmware. But coming the next week or so, I’ll post about my experiences with this new firmware.

Impulsive Shopping

So on an impulse I went out and bought the Nokia N95, not a bad impulse buy in my opinion, I’ve done worse!

First impressions were yes this is fantastic, and 3 weeks on has my opinion changed? No. Simply put. There are a few things that could be improved but there always is, nothing is perfect. Although N95 is very close to being perfect. Not everyone will agree with me, but each to their own. Two things that do come to mind always are the RAM and Battery Life.

Battery Life:

The main point which I do agree with many users out there is the battery life. Yes Nokia should realise that with the beast the N95 is, it would be drinking the life out of the battery like an alcoholic at a bar. But even so it doesn’t do too bad. I can compare it to my LG Kg800 Chocolate, it’s got the same sort of battery life. Compare both phones features to see that the battery life isn’t so bad.

RAM:

The main thing that annoys me is the RAM. I’ve read an article by Steve Litchfield posted on AllAboutSymbian and have to say I agree with him. He has more or less hit the nail on the head. It needs more RAM and loads of it. Take this example fore instance:

I just shot a 30 second clip on my N95 at the highest setting, I click stop and try to review it and see if it is any good, and oops “not enough memory…blah blah”, it means I’ve got to close the camera down (exit), then browse to my gallery and check out the clip to see if it is any good. That is very annoying.

I hope Nokia can sort it out soon with some sort of Firmware upgrade, if not the whole hullabaloo about almost DVD quality video capture is not such a big deal.

But on a positive note, the video editing on the N95 itself is awesome, simple, extensive and great fun. Check out Steve Litchfield’s video review.

Those two are probably the only negatives I’ve found on the N95 so far, let’s hope it stays at 2 or decreases to one.