hello 5800

Good news! 5800 iPlayer now supports downloading programs, with 7 days to watch.  Not every program has download, but all the ones i tried did.  HURRAH! this is a real tipping point application for mobile video usage.  Load it up at home on wifi then watch where ever you are without any streaming issues.

Note: you need to update to v20 software for this to work, but thankfully most people seem able to update now.

More TV fun, this time its the sky app, which lets you set your sky+ remotely. And it works - a little set up is required, you need to set up an account at sky.com.  But its simple and does the job.  I even managed to record something on the train home that started 15 mins later with no problem, though it warns to allow 30 mins for the request to sync.  The app is little slow, and duplicates the sky EPG interface literally, down the the coloured ‘remote’ buttons.  It would probably be wiser to adopt an interface familiar to and optimised for the target device.

It also refuses to let me access the streaming content - saying my service provider (t-mobile) does not support it - though I am sure they were pushing mobile sky streaming on the N96!

TV Out.  I did some testing of the TV out functions today on both the Nokia 5800 and an iPod touch.  The iPod uses component (RGB) cables, which offer better quality from the off, the downside being they cost £30 and come bundled with an additional usb charger (normally retailing at £19) for some strange reason. The 5800 comes with the tv out composite cable included, but its a lower quality cable.  I test out the same lowish quality mp4 file on both devices.  It was a 320x180, 23 frames per second, 695 kbits/second.  The file plays great on the built in screens of both devices.  But on the big screen it looked terrible.  Nether looked good, the nokia was probably the cleaner more jaggy display, the iPod did alot of blurring as it attempted to blow it up to size.  I tried a music video from iTMS and that looked very good on the iPod, I didnt have any 640x320 nokia videos, I tested the included batman video, which looked better, but suffered again from being very highly compressed.

One big difference is that with the nokia the screen always mimics the phone, the iPod only plays on the big screen when a movie is playing - so no big screen gaming options.  Overall the TV out looked pretty poor on a HD screen, I suspect a CRT would be more forgiving.  I used the TV out cable from my N95, not the bundled one (as i left that at work) though i suspect that makes no difference.

Next up i tested iPlayer on both machines.

Here there was a clear winner, the iPod image was clean and clear and very watchable.  The nokia stream was so poor in quality that it was basically unwatchable.  BBC provide a higher quality stream to the iPod/iPhone iPlayer users than the nokia one.  Which is a shame as I suspect the 5800 could handle the better quality version.  I suspect it is because some operators let you stream over 3G.

So in summary the TV out is a nice touch for quickly viewing photos and maybe emergency video playback.  But you get a better quality experience on the handset directly, so fun but not that useful. The one plus was iPlayer on the iPod which worked excellently.

S60 Calendar - This is way improved from previous incarnations, well its essentially the same - and ‘cloud syncing’ via ovi or google isn’t there ‘yet’ - but I suspect most of these smart phone centric features will be ready in time fore the N97 launch.  The main improvement is via the use of all that extra screen real-estate.  The calendar and PIM programs in general really benefit from a higher resolution.  Of course the S60 platform trumps things like iPhone by having an active homescreen, something i missed, and as a consequence missed meetings as I wasn’t being constantly, yet ambiently, reminded of upcoming appointments.  It’s not perfect, and I live in constant ‘sync clash’ fear, as I use entourage pushing to iCal and clouding to mobile me, in addition to using iSync to get the info on my phone.  It’s not elegant - but works.  PC users may just rely on pc suite.  Google users are less well catered for - but theres plenty of tools to cross sync.

I generally enter all my appointments on the desktop - and use the phone as a reminder tool.