A1000blog

"Free" 3G TV

Yesterday Tele2 (a Swedish telephone operator) announced that they offer TTV "the first free global TV-station for 3G phones (Swedish press release). Well, it may be free for their customers, the rest of use risk up facing quite large data communication bills. Luckily enough 3 Sweden offers free data this month (sources tell me this is because their billing system is buggy) so I have actually enjoyed a piece of the take for free.

At wap.ttv.lu you may see and hear the program. In addition the site offers traffic camera images and other content as well. It´s all in French. The fixed Internet address is www.ttv.lu

A couple of weeks ago I started listening to radio. TV here I come!

Easy video creation - see samples

I have made an habit out of reading feeds daily from My-Symbian (plus the two Swedish blogs Kommenterat and mymarkup.net). So, when I found out that Makayama software released Mobile Media Maker for the A1000 I downloaded it as soon has I got home.

By now I have tried to convert videos from my TV-card (see previous post), digital films I already had and DVDs. Generally I found the software extremely easy to use and suprisingly fast. I still have to fiddle a little bit before I am sure about the DVD conversion. It should work (they claim that), but I have problems with lost audio. Probably this is a combination of the ripper I use and the settings I do.

In any case, if you want to make videos for your A1000 (3gp format) Mobile Media Maker will do the trick. I´ve remade a number of music videos and commercial captured with my TV-card. I can´t share these with you (laws you know :-), but as a courtesy I offer you Juranessic and Matrix Fart (download them zipped), two of my favorite films from Pocketmovies.

Mobile Personal Video Recordings

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a video/TV-card (Hauppage PVR-350) and installed it in one of the PCs we have at home. Included in the package was a software based service called TvOnTime (similar apps exists for other countries). TvOnTime integrates Swedish TV-channel listings with the possibility to do web-based set ups of Personal Vide Recordings. See PVRblog for more info, although that blog is geared more towards the TiVo-system).

One of TvOnTime's features is mobile access through either a wap or xhtml-interface. I use the xhtml-interface, which is really convenient (remembers me so I don´t have to log in all the time). Besides giving me the possibility to check out TV-listings on my A1000, I can select the programs I want recorded. The only drawback is that the PC has to be turned on at home. At user defined intervals the application in the home based PC accesses the TvOnTime system to dowload the TV-programming I have defined. It works very well indeed.

Language confusions for media folders

In the manual (i.e. the Swedish one - havent bothered to check other non-English manuals) there are instructions on where to put media files. The instructions use Swedish folder names (e.g. MediaFiler/Ljud), but the A1000 assumes English names (e.g. Media Files/audio) for all folders even though I selected Swedish language when I configured the phone.

Hence, it took me a while and some experimentation before I got the A1000 to play MP3 files. This might be a bug in the phone. If so, I will get problem when the software is updated. On the other hand, it might be a "bug" in the manual.