Couple of weeks back I saw the Ad of airtel on TV saying "Now you can watch live tv on your mobile." I was wondering how can this happen with out 3G?
This is what you have to do to watch live TV on your mobile(And yes, they are using the crappy GPRS for Live TV):
ACTIVATION PROCEDURE
- SMS ‘TV’ to 54321 to download the Mobile TV application on your GPRS enabled handset OR
- Goto AIRTEL LIVE on your phone and download the “Mobile TV” application directly OR
- Visit AIRTEL LIVE WAP portal (live.airtelworld.com) – click on the MOBILE TV banner on the homepage & download
SUBSCRIPTION CHARGES
you can choose from any of the following three packages
| Channels |
Usage (Min) |
Validity (Days) |
Cost (Rs) |
| 50 |
80 |
7 |
Rs. 40 |
| 1 |
30 |
7 |
Rs. 15 |
| 1 |
20 |
1 |
Rs. 10 |
The service is powered by MIMOBI.TV
50 channels for 40Rs is OK but the catch is you can view only 80 minutes that is 1 hour 20 minutes per week... wierd ha????
These are the supported handsets: Supported handsets:
• Nokia S60– 3230, 3250, 5200, 5300, 5320(Xpress Edition), 5500(Sport), 5700(Xpress), 6086, 6110(Navigator), 6120(Classic), 6121(Classic), 6124(Classic), 6210(Navigator), 6220(Classic), 6300, 6260, 6290, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6650,6670, 6680, 6681, 6682, 7373, 7610, N70, N71, N72, N73, N75, N76, N77, N78, N79, N80, N81, N82, N85, N90, N91, N92, N93, N93i, N95, N96, E50, E51, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E66, E70, E71, E90.
• Sony Ericsson J2ME
– K310i, K320i, K510i, K600i, K750i,V600i, W200i, W300i, W550i, W600i, W700i, W800i, W810i, W900i,Z310i, Z520i, Z525i, Z530i, Z550i, Z558i.
Also any phone with symbian OS will do.. I am not sure about other platforms.
Anyway just to get a feel of how they were providing this , I took a 50 channels pack of Airtel Mobile Tv which contains the following channels
Star News, NDTV India, CNN, BBC World, NDTV Profit, Aaj Tak, Live India, India TV, Inida News, Mini Movies, Bolly Theatre, Bindaas, Imagine TV, Star One, Pogo,Zoom, Shemarro, MobileJockey, Mobile Special, Cartoon Network, HollyWood Movies, Times Now, NDTV 24x7, Headlines Today, Kairali TV, manorama News, IndiaVision, Jaihind TV, almost all Tamil, teugu anfother regional channels, ESPN, FTV,CNBCTV18 etc. and many more...
Airtel Mobile TV Viewing experience:
Most of the channels I tried to watch, gave me an error "File received is corrupted" error!! Cant a company like Airtel cannot send video files without being corrupted or do a retry without telling the user to retry for a paid subscription ?. And there is no use in retrying also, the file is always corrupted.
I could watch only few channels that too after waiting for almost couple of minutes(for buffering). Once the buffered video is played, the video just stops to buffer again and the video clarity is just crappy.. You cannot even makeout the face of a news reader!!!
The funny part is that whenever we open the Airtel Mobile TV app, they say "Happy Viewing" and to be frank the viewing experience is not that happy!!!
I am a big fan of Airtel customer service and QOS, but Mobile TV indeed failed me... No wonder Airtel is not advertising Mobile TV on their website yet...
Verdict: Its a waste of money to subscribe for Airtel Mobile TV now as it runs on GPRS which is worse than a dialup connection and if you would like to watch TV on mobile, wait till 3G arrives!!!
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