7:16pm EDT, Thu Sep 2

Envivio Puts Live US, European TV on the iPhone

By: The Online Reporter
Publish Date: July 10, 2009

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For mobile TV, continents are no big deal anymore. Users in the mood for a BBC World News break or perhaps a French documentary on sea life no longer have to be in the EU to catch these or other live programs on European TV stations, thanks to iLiveTV. The same goes for European users who want to catch an ABC, NBC or PBS program. The iLiveTV app for the iPhone comes from Envivio, a company that focuses on developing IP video systems and platforms. The app is being beta-tested right now and features live TV, though there’s no program guide or channel information on the current offering quite yet. The app’s current US offering includes: - NBC with adaptive encoding. - ABC affiliate KGO-TV with adaptive encoding. - France 2, 3 and 5 with adaptive encoding. - E-Loop with adaptive encoding. - Arte with adaptive encoding. - PBS World with adaptive encoding. - 5 PBS channels with a variety of bandwidth options. - KRON 4 with adaptive encoding. The European offering includes: - BBC World with adaptive encoding. - RTBF with adaptive encoding. - France 5 optimized for 3G. - Arte optimized for 3G. These looked to be unaltered feeds from the channels themselves, with full commercials intended for the TV-viewing audience and no content blockage. We were able to catch live sporting events, documentaries, news programs, cartoons, soap operas and even a movie being played on the channels without any restriction. The videos come in clear and crisp and the majority of the channels showed no signal drops or sputtering. The BBC World channel stops and buffers about every two minutes. The NBC and ABC channels sometimes also cut in and out, though the interval is not as regular as the BBC channel. Video quality is about the best the iPhone has seen and the quality does seem to adjust to the network the phone is using. Using the service on Wi-Fi yields a slightly better picture than using it only on a 3G network, but using it on 3G only doesn’t seem to cause any extra video stuttering, breaking or loss of audio quality. All channels that continuously stop for buffering do so regardless of whether the user is on Wi-Fi or 3G. Surprisingly, the channels set up for the European Market performed the best overall, even on a phone located in the middle of the US. Videos work in portrait and landscape format. Envivio says the service will support “catch-up TV, video on demand and a client channel guide,” though none of these are available with the beta. The company is also distributing images that include channels for specific content, including the Formula 1 racing series. The service has removed the boundaries that traditional broadcast TV relies upon. Presenting a wide array of content from sources in countries continents away is a huge step for any form of TV, but to see it in mobile is a game changer. Mobile apps have traditionally focused on a niche, say the Major League Baseball application that streams some games, but this service grabs a set of channels that cover almost every TV genre – thankfully they left out infomercials. If this is the future of mobile TV, all those fears about mobile devices pulling audiences away from the traditional TV offerings could very well be true. Why wait for the late-night hours when PBS begins to show UK-centered content and news when you can turn on the iPhone and catch it live?