This weekend marks the start of Vodafone UK offering live coverage of international cricket and the Football League Playoffs from Sky Sports to their 3G customers.
They’re keen to point out that this is the first time in the UK, live football matches will be shown simultaneously live on mobile and on TV.
It’s not like this is going to be a trickle of content. There’s over 100 hours of coverage scheduled in the first month, with fifteen live football matches and three live Test matches. The cricket will continue with live coverage until the final Test against Pakistan in September.
Don’t think there’s going to an extra financial penalty to pay for this. The coverage will be available at no extra charge as a bonus service for subscribers to Sky Mobile TV’s News, Sports and Factual Pack.
Having said that the packages aren’t what you’d call cheap. Each Sky Mobile TV pack (detailed below) is and extra £5/month.
Sky has been actively putting its content over different platforms for quite some months now, following the announcement in January of Sky by Broadband which delivers some of Sky’s content to PC’s over a, you guess it, broadband connection.
Bizarrely, Sky specify that the content is for Personal use only. Errr … it’s on a mobile phone Sky. It’s not like you’re going to get the throngs in the pub crowding around watching it on a tiny screen. That is until someone comes up with a huge magnifying glass that the phone sits behind.
The packs that are available are
- News, Sport & Factual Pack: Sky News; CNN; Bloomberg; Sky Sports News; At The Races; Discovery Mobile Factual; National Geographic Channel; The History Channel.
- Entertainment Pack: Sky One; Sky Movies; Living TV; Discovery Mobile Lifestyle; Nickelodeon; Paramount Comedy; Cartoon Network; Bravo; The Biography Channel and MTV Trax and MTV Snax.
- Music Pack: MTV Trax, MTV Snax, The Box, Smash Hits, Kiss, Kerrang, B4, IMF and IMF 2.
Most of these don’t run live but are made up of dedicated ‘made for mobile’ channels, featuring regularly updated blocks of programming.
The US mobile companies are finally, really getting hold of delivering content of all sorts to mobile phones.
As with all things to mobile phones, we’d love to see the figures as to who actually pays for access to this. A barrier which has yet to be consistently cracked.
They’ve been busy boys at BT this week, with the UK telecoms giant making two major announcements.
Using the UK’s existing digital audio broadcasting (DAB) network, the broadcast service will be offered on a limited exclusive basis to virgin Mobile customers later this year. BT Movio will be available in the future to all mobile operators in the UK.
Microsoft partnership
BBC World have been busy bunnies of late, signing distribution deals all over the globe.
The video streams include the adverts that would be shown if BBC World were being shown on the TV in the region. As yet, BBC World aren’t charging their advertisers any extra to splash them on mobile screens – they’re seeing it as added value for them
In the 3/Hutchinson Australia deal, the subscribers are being asked to pay Au$4/month for unlimited access, Au$2/day or Au$0.50/two minutes.
Over the last couple of weeks there’s been a lot of speculation that Disney are going to be bidding to buy Pixar, the digital animation studio that’s supplied the majority of Disney’s successful computer-generated animation successes.
Slapping iTunes around the face with their hefty gauntlet, Google have laid down a challenge to iTunes with the announcement of their new video and television Internet service, the Google Video Store.
The service promises to “democratise” video sales, letting wannabe Spielbergs sell their movies on Google Video Store, with Google taking what Larry Page has described as a “very low” percentage of the sale cost.
Visitors to the Google Video homepage at 
Speculators with a wad of cash might like to consider convert said cash into an ITV plc share holding in the next few days some feel.
BT, despite having previously stated that it has no desire to enter the content market, needs to consider the competition from both BSkyB and a revitalised NTL. This could force BT’s into making an early move before other predatory companies come out of the shadows but will need to balance this against the cost of such an acquisition.
Unlike Sky, which is principally a broadcast platform owner and call centre operator, ITV actually has what companies with desires to be fully-grown media giants badly need; content and a fifty year plus heritage of making TV programmes.
The BBC has announced its Open News Archive, making archive news reports freely available to the UK public to download and use for free in their own creative works.
Made available under the terms of the recently-launched Creative Archive Licence, the footage can be viewed, downloaded, edited and mixed by UK residents – so long as it’s for non-commercial programming (there’s also several other caveats that budding film makers should read first 
Helen Boaden, Director, BBC News, said: “This trial is an important step in allowing us to share with our audiences the extraordinary news archive which the BBC has recorded over the years. We look forward to getting their reaction.”
The BBC already offer nearly a hundred clips in their