Nokia releases H.264 video podcatcher

Feb12

Nokia releases H.264 video podcatcher

Nokia announced a new mobile feed reader focused on video today at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona. The Nokia Video Center comes pre-installed on new Nokia Series 60 devices such as the newly announced N95 and N93i but is also available as a separate download for compatible devices. You can load videos onto the phone through your home computer or receive updates over-the-air at HSDPA speeds or using open WiFi while you're on the go.

The Video Center software supports H.264 videos, meaning videobloggers have even more reasons to create specially formatted and mini-sized (320x240) versions of their show for iPods and Nokia phones. YouTube will soon release its videos in H.264 according to the Nokia announcement. Media RSS is supported (and encouraged) and publishers can send users a special MMS to assist in the subscription process.

The Nokia N95 comes with 160 MB of internal storage with up to 2 GB available via a microSD memory card. Mobile videos will make most sense for people with a large memory card always in their smartphones since internal storage will fill up fast.

The Nseries phones are more popular in Europe than the U.S. -- they are quad-band but no carriers here offer them -- but the popularity of the world's most popular cell phone brand might drive some new video subscribers in regions where DMB is already popular and built-in to most new phones.

Posted at 1:50PM
Updated at 4:56PM
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Robyn Tippins on February 12, 2007 at 7:17 PM wrote: #

I've struggled with mobile video myself, being a video publisher. I admit I cheated for a while and only worried about making my feeds work for iTunes and blithely ignored the other options. Of course, now that I have a Zune I see the need to be more open in my video options. Mobile video is here to stay and we as publishers have to make sure that we optimize for all platforms, and not just the ones that are the most popular. YouTube going to H.264 will hasten the transitions, surely.
Michael Lehman on February 12, 2007 at 9:50 PM wrote: #

Niall, I think this is cool but do you know about FeederReader it's been around for a couple of years and works on PocketPC and SmartPhone and does essentially the same thing.
Kosso on February 13, 2007 at 3:35 AM wrote: #

I have the N91, with a 2GB hard disk on board. Nokia have had a built in podcatcher for a while now. It's odd that they needed to do a seperate video podcatcher, instead of updating the 'Podcasting' app to support video enclosures.

It's a great app which supports OPML import and export for directory creation on the handset. Though, unfortunately, it does not support OPML inclusion, but I have beem talking with them about this, and they should support it in the future, since now they realize the data saving that can be made when all your 'folders' are built with inclusion (like ours at podcast.com :) )
Steve Garfield on February 16, 2007 at 1:48 AM wrote: #

Here's a video of me watching YouTube and Rocketboom on my Nokia N95.