Slingbox helps make 3G mobiles relevant
It looks as though 2007 will be the year when the mobile phone starts to discover its true potential. It has, of course, been extraordinarily successful already. There are more than 2bn users and the device has become so indispensable, so personal, that 60% of users take it to bed and 80% of spouses or partners don't share it with each other. No other consumer product is like that. Yet for all its amazing potential, most of us still use the phone for the same three tasks: voice, text and as an alarm clock.
All that could now change as the mobile operators awake from a long sleep and companies providing mobile content take advantage of the so-called 2.0 revolution of user-empowered web services tailor made for the mobile. This can already be seen in the new Nokia 73, as customised by 3, which takes smart phones to a new plane.
What impressed me most was not the Carl Zeiss camera (excellent though it is), nor the free phone calls through the internet via Skype, nor the one-click access to Yahoo and eBay; it was the link with a set-top device called Slingbox. It is difficult to get the measure of this device without seeing it in action. Slingbox, amazingly, enables you to watch surprisingly high-resolution television on your mobile phone anywhere on 3's network.
The signals come not from a national transmitter but from a Slingbox installed on your TV set at home that redirects signals across the internet. You can watch BBC programmes, Freeview or Sky channels anywhere in the world as long as you are on a "3" 3G network - though other operators will doubtless follow suit.
It was easily the best television picture I have seen on a mobile; that for BBC 2 was better than the reception we get on our main set at home. You can program your TV set remotely and watch a channel different from that being viewed at home. I'm converted. The same technology enables you to stream music from your own collection on your home PC (though not yet Macs). Sadly, you can't stream from an iTunes collection because of Apple's digital rights management policies.
This phone dispels two longstanding gripes with mobile phone operators. First, data hoarding. The cost works out at around £35 a month for an "all you can eat" tariff including all television and data traffic (plus £99 for the Slingbox). That is not unreasonable.
Like many others, I stopped using the phone as an internet modem because of the unknown charges that build up when you use Google or a photo hosting site: you might get data-heavy images that will be downloaded whether you want them or not. That's why mobile data traffic, which should have exploded with the coming of 3G technology, has been almost static for several years.
Second, the phone passes the usability test: it's only two or three clicks (depending where the Slingbox icon is located on your phone) and you are watching a TV programme.
The downside? I have only had it a few days, but the picture did freeze occasionally (presumably a coverage problem) and there was pixellation on some channels. My set-top box was installed by 3, so I don't know how complicated it would have been on my own. Battery life is clearly going to be a problem if you watch television for any length of time; but maybe we will just have to get used to carrying spare batteries around.
If phones keep on improving like this then in three or four years, when technology has improved enough to have a true "broadband" experience anywhere, there will be no stopping them. All of the new social networking sites - from YouTube to MySpace - are hosted on the internet so can be accessed directly by phone wherever you are. So why rush back to your computer at home? Mobilise yourself: the revolution is just beginning.
Victor Keegan
Thursday December 14, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
It looks as though 2007 will be the year when the mobile phone starts to discover its true potential. It has, of course, been extraordinarily successful already. There are more than 2bn users and the device has become so indispensable, so personal, that 60% of users take it to bed and 80% of spouses or partners don't share it with each other. No other consumer product is like that. Yet for all its amazing potential, most of us still use the phone for the same three tasks: voice, text and as an alarm clock.
All that could now change as the mobile operators awake from a long sleep and companies providing mobile content take advantage of the so-called 2.0 revolution of user-empowered web services tailor made for the mobile. This can already be seen in the new Nokia 73, as customised by 3, which takes smart phones to a new plane.
What impressed me most was not the Carl Zeiss camera (excellent though it is), nor the free phone calls through the internet via Skype, nor the one-click access to Yahoo and eBay; it was the link with a set-top device called Slingbox. It is difficult to get the measure of this device without seeing it in action. Slingbox, amazingly, enables you to watch surprisingly high-resolution television on your mobile phone anywhere on 3's network.
The signals come not from a national transmitter but from a Slingbox installed on your TV set at home that redirects signals across the internet. You can watch BBC programmes, Freeview or Sky channels anywhere in the world as long as you are on a "3" 3G network - though other operators will doubtless follow suit.
It was easily the best television picture I have seen on a mobile; that for BBC 2 was better than the reception we get on our main set at home. You can program your TV set remotely and watch a channel different from that being viewed at home. I'm converted. The same technology enables you to stream music from your own collection on your home PC (though not yet Macs). Sadly, you can't stream from an iTunes collection because of Apple's digital rights management policies.
This phone dispels two longstanding gripes with mobile phone operators. First, data hoarding. The cost works out at around £35 a month for an "all you can eat" tariff including all television and data traffic (plus £99 for the Slingbox). That is not unreasonable.
Like many others, I stopped using the phone as an internet modem because of the unknown charges that build up when you use Google or a photo hosting site: you might get data-heavy images that will be downloaded whether you want them or not. That's why mobile data traffic, which should have exploded with the coming of 3G technology, has been almost static for several years.
Second, the phone passes the usability test: it's only two or three clicks (depending where the Slingbox icon is located on your phone) and you are watching a TV programme.
The downside? I have only had it a few days, but the picture did freeze occasionally (presumably a coverage problem) and there was pixellation on some channels. My set-top box was installed by 3, so I don't know how complicated it would have been on my own. Battery life is clearly going to be a problem if you watch television for any length of time; but maybe we will just have to get used to carrying spare batteries around.
If phones keep on improving like this then in three or four years, when technology has improved enough to have a true "broadband" experience anywhere, there will be no stopping them. All of the new social networking sites - from YouTube to MySpace - are hosted on the internet so can be accessed directly by phone wherever you are. So why rush back to your computer at home? Mobilise yourself: the revolution is just beginning.
Victor Keegan
Thursday December 14, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
