Podcasting according to Rogers

February 5, 2006 in Uncategorized by Administrator | 7 comments

Last week, this press release anounced North America’s first wireless podcast service.  Rogers Wireless will offer more than 1500 podcasts to canadian consumers using melodeo‘s mobilecast technology.
 
2006_02_05-mobilcast.gif
 
The service costs 5$ per month plus, of course, data traffic.
 
I have my doubts about this service model. I feel that there is no real benefit compared to downloading and synching to the PC. Podcasts are convenient because they are normally not time critical. They are time-shifting proof. I see other problems too:
  • Limited (filtered) offer: there are (will be) millions of podcasts out there
  • Pay for something that’s free.
  • Could be hard on the battery. Podcasts are large files

Mobile Broadcasting such as DMB and DVB-H will also be much more efficient for that kind of applications.

  2. Peter Childs’s avatar

    Peter Childs on February 6, 2006 at 19:00

    People who like the convenience of having one device will probably like it – especially if the device is smart enought to pause the podcast audio while you’re on the phome.

    I doubt that it would make much a hit on the batteries – most MP3 players are getting better than 10 hours of play out of a AAA and cell battaries are lot more powerful than that.

    Still I take your point that Rogers will have a hard time keeping up with the number of podcasts comming out.

  3. Administrator’s avatar

    Administrator on February 6, 2006 at 19:23

    Peter,

    Cell batteries may be more powerful but you have to take into account that you will require battery power for the file transfer, which requires to turn the RF components on for a while. This, I suspect, requires more juice that just playback.

  4. Peter Childs’s avatar

    Peter Childs on February 6, 2006 at 19:35

    Good point, I hadn’t thought of file transfer. I’m still not sure it would be a huge hit on the batteries – if it’s like my USB 1.0 player its 3 – 4 minutes of ‘talk’ time for 40 minutes of file playing.

    Like your blog.

  5. Stan Sorensen’s avatar

    Stan Sorensen on February 7, 2006 at 15:56

    To the point of benefit vs. downloading to a PC and synching – a number of mass media podcasts are being updated mulitple times per day. If you wait until you are in front of your PC you’ll miss an update. Add that there’s something to be said for immediate gratification.

    In terms of batter power I listen daily on both a Sony Ericsson z520a and a Nokia 6620. I stream 2-4 podcasts of around 5 mins each to my phone, and make/receive the same number of voice calls I always have. I don’t charge my batteries that much more than before Mobilcast. Of course mileage may vary.

    The one thing you didn’t mention but bears calling out is that performance varies based on signal strength.

  6. Administrator’s avatar

    Administrator on February 7, 2006 at 22:24

    Thanks Stan for your “insider” comment. I agree with you that these frequently published podcasts (mostly news I suppose) will fit well to your model. However I think that they will compete for user’s attention against the pre-downloaded podcasts.

    Also, PC-synching (with wires) is not that convenient I must admit. I guess that soon our personal device will sync directly to the Net wirelessly (bluetooth, wifi,…) when I’m at home , office or any other “broadband pitstop”. This will make the whole synching quite transparent to the user. Then, my device will always be filled with great content… and I may not even notice!

  7. Karl Boutin’s avatar

    Karl Boutin on February 8, 2006 at 9:55

    I am a big podcasting fan. Even though I _love_ the media I cannot see myself pay 5$ month + data fees for something I can get for free. I have to sync and charge my iPod anyway.
    The point of podcasting is the time-shifting. If the content that you are after is so time sensitive that you need it right now while on the go then why are you listening to a podcast an not some broadcast media?

    But the bottom line is really cost. GIve it for free and with decent data download charges and then we will talk