Streaming video over GPRS: Lord of the Rings premiere

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freitasm

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#776 2-Dec-2003 09:51

I was watching the live streaming video of the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King premiere here in Wellington when we decided to go out for dinner. No problem...

We took my Pocket PC and my Bluetooth GPRS mobile out for dinner too, and watched the rest of the streaming live, over Vodafone GPRS

.

Fifteen minutes of streaming used 4MB of my allowance. So far so good. But then I thought of the poor guys using the new Optus live streaming service in Australia. According to their TOS they don't pay more than AU$9.99 a month - providing that their traffic is limited to 2MB

!

It's a joke. An operator offering live video but places a 2MB montly CAP? It's hardly worth seven minutes of live video... Go figure what these guys at Optus are thinking!

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taniwha

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#2347 3-Dec-2003 21:20

I guess if you go over 2MB then they get to charge you a whole lot more.
wouldn't that be their motive?

freitasm

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#2349 3-Dec-2003 21:25

Yes, of course... But even so, 2MB is not even a hook. Give something to the users. Say "15MB and then we charge after". That's more like it. Or like Verizon and Cingular: charge a flat fee, US$ 19.95 and you use all you can.

Interesting, the United States is only now catching up in terms of mobile (GPRS/CDMA/EDGE), but they already have these flat fee plans, while Europe and Australasia are lagging behind. I thought Europe always claimed the "more" mobile crown.

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taniwha

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#2350 3-Dec-2003 21:32

i used to have the $5 for 1MB on vodafone, which was sweet as for email and ICQ.

that's probably all most people want for now. most people would not have the know-how, or the desire to watch a web cam while out for dinner.

i suppose the ROK premiere would be the exception. I wish I'd thought of that - could have left my cubicle and gone done to courtney and watch the web cam from there!. I have 50MBs of traffic/month. :-D

Vicx

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#2662 9-Jan-2004 20:30

how do you get streaming video over GPRS? I thought GPRS was supposed to be slow like dialup, and how much does it cost? does it go to your vodafone account? does it work if u have no credit? I can surf wap sites for free if i've got no credit, does this work for streaming video on some devices too?

freitasm

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#2664 9-Jan-2004 20:45

Providing you have the correct client software you should be able to watch streaming video over GPRS without a problem. In my case I used the Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC, with Windows Media Player. RealPlayer streams are even easier: there are versions of RealPlayer for Pocket PC, Palm and Symbian (UIQ and Series 60).

The speed is important of course, but GPRS gives you around 42kbps, and most streaming technologies will work ok with this speed - not real life images but it will not be talking heads either. Quite acceptable. You'll notice that Windows Media Player and RealPlayer are the ones that give you the best overall results. Of course it helps that a Pocket PC is running at 400MHz, unlike the mobile phones.

Of course you'll pay for GPRS usage, and it depends on your network. In the case of Vodafone NZ it'll be part of your GPRS allowance (if you have any) and then a certain $ per 10kb afterwards.

When you say credit I take you're talking about Prepay?

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Vicx

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#2665 9-Jan-2004 20:50

yea I'm talking about prepay credit. who gets a GPRS allowance? I haven't heard of that before.

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freitasm

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#2666 9-Jan-2004 20:57

If you're on a postpaid account you can have an allowance (prices). Right now when I'm writing this the table is like this:

NZ$5/month: 1MB
NZ$10/month: 3MB
NZ$15/month: 5MB
NZ$30/month: 15MB
NZ$45/month: 25MB
NZ$80/month: 50MB

You pay for your allowance regardless of using or not. If you pay NZ$15 you can use up to 5MB. If you use 4MB you still pay NZ$15. If you use more than your allowance, then you'll pay $ for each 10kb block of data. If you don't have an allowance then you pay $ for every 10kb used.

Of course this is on top of your monthly bill.

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Vicx

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#2667 9-Jan-2004 21:33

is that for international traffic or all?

freitasm

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#2669 9-Jan-2004 21:47

Any traffic... But that's cheap compared with Roaming GPRS. I went to the US Dec/2003, and roaming GPRS on AT&T Wireless was NZ$30/MB!

This is at the same time that T-Mobile offers flat fee GPRS for US$19.95.

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