Mobile TV – not quite yet

Just upgraded to a Nokia N73. Very nice it is too. I've pretty much come to expect good usability from Nokia - I loved their older phones and they do an admiral job of keeping complex phones as simple as possible.

Anyway, it being a 3G handset, Orange are desperate to foist 3G content on me. So I have two months of free mobile Sky Sports TV, and unlimited off-peak browsing (meaning I'll be spamming the lovely Flickr upload feature whenever the photographic urge takes me).

So, my first foray into mobile TV... Well. It's a great idea, but the quality's just too damn low right now. Massive compression, glitchy visuals, and nowhere near enough detail. For the Ashes, it's better than Test Match Special, but not by much. I can pick out a Warne leg break, but there's no chance of seeing Hoggard swing it, although, based on the last Test, you'd struggle to see that on a 42" high-definition screen.

But, oh well, it's a start. It will get better soon enough. Google think an iPod will hold all of the world's TV programmes in 12 years. Interesting, but I think the bigger issue is that TV programmes won't exist in a format we know by then. As the long tail grows and convergence and YouTube continue to flatten everything in their path, where's the line between 'a programme' and 'visual content'?

Grasping the obvious, the BBC bleat "Online viewing eroding TV viewing". Yep. It'll erode it so much that they'll be the same thing soon.

But not yet.