Nokia N96: What’s on the Big Screen

Today we set my Nokia N96 down on its porno kickstand and marvel at the video options for that huge 2.8-inch screen.

First up, the groundbreaking DVB-H live television tuner…

Oh, right… Just like Japan’s 1seg and South Korea’s DMB, Digital Video Broadcast isn’t available in Canada or the US and A. It has already launched in some Asian and European markets, though — hopefully when DVB finally makes its way here the carriers will see the value in keeping it a free service.

Yeah, probably not.

Next is a mobile version of BBC’s iPlayer…

Oops, almost forgot that the old media old guard thinks it can divide up the internet into different markets as has been done in the past. We have the same problem here, but that doesn’t make it any less infuriating…

Finally, something I can watch! The YouTube feed does a passable job of filling in for the sorely-missed emTube. You can’t save videos, though, only stream them.

And (big surprise) you can’t save those 20th Century Fox film trailers to your handset, either. But to give you an idea of the quality of these things you can check out this video of my first-ever S60 handset, courtesy of the directory’s official Nokia feed. Oh, and take note of the filetype and size while you’re at it, as the N96 will only play MPEG-4 video at 320 x 240 pixels.

A Requiem For emTube

Loyal readers know I’m no fan of Apple’s iPhone, mostly because its many fanboys and girls are blissfully ignorant of other smartphones and what they can do. The iPhone’s YouTube Player, in particular, is surprisingly bad when compared to the premiere YouTube app for S60, emTube.

emTube Search

Start up the emTube app and you’ll be greeted with a nice clean interface, allowing you to see the top-rated and most viewed videos on the site, or search for something more specific — in this case a little submission of my own from last summer’s iPhone launch in this country.

emTube Results

And here’s where emTube puts Apple to shame: I can view the streamed video using an available connection or I can download it to my handset for playback anywhere else. The saved file is optimized for the resolution of my handset — in the case of my E71, 320 x 240 pixels. Click here to see an archived copy, and download the associated file to see how much better it would look on my phone!

emTube Fail

But all is not well in world of emTube. The trouble started when the developer went MIA sometime last year — not a huge issue as copies of the last-known release are widely available on Nokia’s MOSH.

But now it seems our beloved YouTube app has stopped working entirely. You can still search for videos but try to view or save them and you’ll get the error message shown above. And judging from the cries for help on the Howard Forums this issue affects S60 handsets and users worldwide.

Thankfully there are alternatives, the easiest of which is to visit YouTube’s mobile portal on the built-in S60 web browser. Clicking on any of the videos will launch the on-board install of (ugh) RealPlayer, with predictably awful results. And of course there’s no way to save the video to your phone, although you can at least save a link to the specific video stream.

CorePlayer YouTube Interface

I chose instead to purchase an app called CorePlayer. At $30 USD it ain’t cheap, but it does support a wider array of video codecs, including my personal favourite.

New to the latest release is an integrated YouTube player. It took me a while to find it; this app was originally built for touchscreens, and the UI for devices without one is fairly bewildering.

CorePlayer YouTube Options

There are certainly a lot of options, though. And it’s here in the specific settings for YouTube streaming that I may have found an answer to why emTube no longer works. Choosing FLV (Flash video) or H.264 (QuickTime) as a file handling protocol yields the same error I get with emTube. Only Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) delivers the goods, so it seems that the folks at Google are the ones responsible for this mess — though why they’d want to deny a superior YouTube experience to the world’s most popular smartphone OS is beyond me.

If you’re wondering, CorePlayer’s RTSP video looks nowhere near as nice as FLV or QuickTime, but it’s at least better than RealPlayer’s ghastly solution. For now it will have to do. Rest in peace, emTube, you will be missed…

Anyone But Harper

On this, the morning of the televised leaders’ debate (the Canadian one, because I live in Canada) I present to you three viral videos I directed for the anti-Stephen Harper site AnyoneButHarper.ca — parodies of ads you may have seen on TV or on the Conservative Party web portal:

Harper on Veterans.

Harper on Family.

Harper on The Arts.

Feel free to spread these far and wide, and on October 14th vote to elect anyone but Harper!