RSSCingular Taps Real for Video Service
By Ed Oswald | Published March 7, 2006, 3:22 PM
Cingular on Tuesday announced the availability of Cingular Video, a free service to subscribers of its high-speed data network. The deployment, which is the first commercial use of RealNetwork's Helix technology, would be available in the 16 markets currently served by the carrier's 3G UMTS/HSDPA network.
Real unveiled the Helix OnlineTV application last September, along with the announcement of Cingular's new service. Application development, hosting of the service and delivery of content is handled by Real, and the streaming video would be in Real Video or 3GPP format.
"Cingular's selection of Real to provide the foundation and delivery of its advanced video services is strong validation for the reliability and advanced capabilities of our Helix OnlineTV Platform," RealNetworks executive vice president John Giamatteo said in a statement.
Video clips would run approximately three to five minutes and content from 18 different channels would be available, including Cartoon Network, NBC, ESPN and HBO. While the service would be included with the $19.99 USD monthly 3G data charge, content from HBO would cost an additional $4.99 USD monthly.
Future plans for the service include music videos from Real Rhapsody, as well as concert programming optimized for mobile devices, Cingular said.
Other carriers offer similar services; Verizon VCast carries a $15 monthly fee, and Sprint Nextel charges $9.99 per month for its video package with a separate data plan required. Cingular had been offering MobiTV, but like Sprint Nextel, the service is $9.99 monthly and requires a data plan.
What remains to be seen, however, is if the American consumer is interested. While mobile video has been a hit outside of the United States, a recent survey indicated only about a quarter of wireless subscribers had any interest in such a feature.
iTunes is awesome
Score: 0
|a program that is always running in the background no thanks
Score: 0
|NOOOO!!!!! I use cingular :(
Hey my phone supports T-Mobile... maybe now is a good time to switch.
I really hate Real and anything they do now, and the phone supports Itunes?. Why not just go with Quicktime then?
Real lost me with all their bundled ads and crap a while ago.
Score: 0
|I would not want them to support iTunes since iTunes files are worse then WMV files (not sure about Real yet)
The sprint phone(which supports iTunes) quality is extremly bad compaired to VCast.
Score: 0
|VCAST Rocks!
Score: 0
|Scary guy - that photoshopped image over at http://hal.lco.net/2006/...ar+Using+Real++Wha.aspx already had the iTunes thing listed from a Cingular Ad. I don't know about Itunes support or not. Guess I should have made my Real photoshop layer a little larger :-). But is was there in the real ad - so, I guess there is support.
Score: 0
|I posted my take on this over here:
http://hal.lco.net/2006/...ar+Using+Real++Wha.aspx
Along with a picture of what I think their phones will look like in operation :-)...
Score: 0
|