How to Watch Movie Clips from Video-Sharing Sites on a Phone
10 January 2007
Watching video clips available on sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, or blip.tv has become so popular that it's time to ask "why can't we watch the same flicks on our multimedia-capable phones?" It's easy to upload videos from a camera phone to a video-sharing site, after all. Of course, many tech-savvy people have also downloaded movies from DVDs to their phones and viewed them on the go. You don't have to deal with those complexities, however, because we'll show you the way to view Internet videos on your phone without any extra trouble.
A typical camera phone or smartphone can't display the portion of a Web page that includes Flash technology. That's why you can't see videos on YouTube on your phone - the videos are displayed in Flash. Until now, one of the few methods of getting videos to a phone has been to download clips from the Internet. However, that method has required plenty of time and patience because a number of video formats, compatible with computers but not with mobile devices, are used to store the moving pictures. You had to find a video or DVD, convert it on your computer to fit to the small screen and then copy it to the phone. Another, equally challenging, technique is to turn the home PC into a Orb media center that can be accessed remotely on a phone.
The new mobile video-sharing sites, such as Moblr, PPVIDZ, and TinyTube, avoid all the hassle caused by incompatible video formats. Now, you can watch Internet videos on your phone because video-sharing services deliver mobile movies in the 3GP format that practically all camera phones and smartphones recognize.
If you want to upload your own camera phone videos to popular sites like blip.tv or YouTube, it's pretty easy. You simply shoot your video, save it on the memory card, and send it via e-mail or via MMS to your video album.
What do you need for watching videos on your phone?
- A phone with an Internet browser software. The best devices can show both HTML (ordinary web pages that you view on your computer) and WAP pages (compact pages).
- A media player application on your phone. The software must be capable of playing 3GP videos. For example, Windows Mobile devices come with Windows Media Player and Symbian OS smartphones come with RealPlayer.
- High-speed data communication technology, like EDGE, EV-DO, UMTS/WCDMA or Wi-Fi on your mobile device. Many phones still come with GPRS, but it is a slow technology for video transfer.
- Data connectivity plan from your service provider that allows megabytes worth of traffic per month (or per day, depending on your viewing habits). It's good to remember that one video alone may eat up several megabytes from your data plan.
- If you are unsure about your phone's capabilities, try this. Find the Web or WAP browser application from your phone. Type avecmobile.com/links into the address field. If you can see the page, you know you have Internet access on your phone. You also have easy access to all the following video links when you select Entertainment from the Category list.
The Best Video-Sharing Sites for Viewing on a Phone
Freebe TV
wap.freebe.roktv.com
A limited selection of news, sports, music, and uploaded videos are available at the Freebe TV. You have to register to the service before you can see what is available. We had problems with viewing the videos on smartphones and camera phones that we had successfully used for testing other video services.
Moblr
www.moblr.com
Moblr is a well designed and reliable video-sharing service that quickly loads into the phone. You can search or browse videos available on the site. Moblr seemed to push videos to the phone faster than other services. For uploading your own camera phone movies, you must register to the site. When we tried it out, Moblr offered a collection of funny TV ads from around the world and videos that Moblr users have recorded themselves. A smartphone running the Windows Internet Explorer browser couldn't display Moblr web pages at all.
MoveDigitalMobile
movemobi.com
MoveDigitalMobile provides a limited selection of videos in 3GP format. Also, we had problems with viewing the clips on smartphones that could show films from other services.
PPCVIDZ.com
www.ppcvidz.com
Ppcvidz lets you watch movies, movie trailers, and music videos if you own a Windows Mobile device (or if you have a Windows computer). A few live TV stations from around the world are also available. Ppcvidz ran very smoothly on a Windows Mobile 5 smartphone. The pages and videos load quickly. The site selects all the material, not the viewers, so you aren’t forced to watch any "funny" home videos. You have to pay for movies and some select material. Ppcvidz is one of the few video sites that we would let those little backseat passengers watch in our car.
TinyTube
tinytube.net
TinyTube lets you search videos from Google Video and Metacafe services. Regardless of what you are looking for, the service always returns a maximum of nine hits. You can choose low, medium, or high quality for viewing. This is an excellent feature for you for managing the download times. The video selection is as excellent or poor (depending on your taste) as the selection of user-uploaded videos on Google Video and Metacafe. If you are looking for Borat or music videos, this is the place to go.
Zoovision
www.zoovision.com/mobile.html
Zoovision offers music videos, podcasts, and film trailers. The service relies on a mix of material its operators have chosen.
YouTube
Orb has released a remote access software that you can install on your home PC. The software turns a Windows XP PC into a media server that you can access remotely, for example, on a phone. In addition to your own files, the new Orb 2 product lets you view YouTube videos. However, as we were writing this review, there were still problems with the Beta release of the software that prevented remote access to YouTube videos.
Moblr was our favorite of these mobile video-sharing services. The web pages and videos on the site were readily accessible on a phone (except for Windows Mobile smartphones). The video selection is growing, but there is already a good selection of funny ads and users' home movies. As you may have noticed, you never know what you might accidentally spot on video services that accept material submitted by users. Most of the clips are harmless fun, but there are videos that may upset children, for instance. We liked PPCVIDZ (for Windows Mobile only) as a site that provides – as far as we could tell – videos safe for all age groups.
Tip: Point your mobile browser to avecmobile.com/links so you don't have to type any of the mentioned web addresses on your phone keypad.
Related stories:
- How to download movies to a phone (and watch them, too)
- Access TV, music and videos from your home PC on your phone via the Orb system
- Tips for finding and downloading video films to a portable media player
- Directory of Web pages designed for small screens
Product reviews:
