Mobile TV (UK)

Sky must be daft not to have something in the pipeline with O2.

 

Never seen the appeal of watching TV on my phone...thats why I have a TV.

 

I think with the introduction of the 3G, its more than possible.
Only issue i can see is battery life.

Edit: Also O2's T&C's say no streaming. Guess these could be ammended though.

 

Say you're out shopping with the missus on a Saturday afternoon and your team has a 3 pm kick off . . . Sky Sports on the iPhone would be handy. Or say you're a student in poor student digs and TV + Sky is too much of a hassle but you want to catch your footy live. Mobile TV is inexpensive and fills the gap.

A good idea imo.

 

Can't see them doing live TV - you would need a TV license which means all kinds of paperwork when selling the service.

 

By "Continuous" i think they mean an actual stream. Youtube on the iPhone is not streamed, it is infact downloaded.

A "continuous" stream would be something like the Tuner application on the app store or indeed, mobile tv.
However, O2's stance on the Tuner app is unclear and i think you will be fine as long as you don't over do it.

 

There is no practical difference between streaming and downloading - the same amount of data still gets downloaded, except one starts playback whilst its still downloading and one downloads everything first. And I'm pretty sure the Youtube client streams.

 

Couldnt agree more, but were discussing the language used in O2's T&C's regarding "continuous streaming".
To me there is no practical difference, but i'm just pointing out that O2 will not allow "continuous streaming", and so their stance on mobile tv is questionable.

 

IANAL, but unless O2's T&Cs explicitly define "continuous streaming" then I don't really know they can enforce it. It's fairly ambiguous. To me, "continuous" means never-ending. Therefore, if I was to stream a 1 hour TV show over BBC iPlayer on 3G (if it was possible) then I've only streamed for 1 hour. Would this be any different to a regular download that took 1 hour to complete? How would they distinguish the two?

 

Seeing as on Sky you can download videos etc, if you could get the iPhone to natively play those files, you'd have an alternative route.