Verizon V-Cast needs some work

Verizon Wireless was nice (or smart) enough to hand out a bunch of mobile phones loaded with its V Cast Mobile TV service to journalists and analysts at the recent CTIA Wireless 2007 show in Orlando. I tried out the Samsung SCH-u620, if only for a few days (Verizon offered the TV service only during the week of the show).

The u620 is a small-unit slider phone, similar to the LG Chocolate in that the top part of the phone slides up to reveal the keypad (or the bottom slides out, if you prefer). Features include a 1.3-megapixel digital camera and camcorder, a microSD card slot, embedded speech recognition (with dictation for messaging) and Bluetooth (including the stereo headset profile). All of the other Verizon Wireless multimedia services, such as V Cast Music and Video downloads, are also on the phone along with the V Cast Mobile TV.

But the main feature of the phone is the ability to watch live TV. A pull-out antenna helps improve the network connection. During the test period, I could watch programs from three major broadcast networks (CBS, NBC and Fox), along with MSNBC news, Comedy Central, ESPN, MTV and Nickelodeon. The "channels" did not necessarily line up with the live TV offered on their regular networks - for example, while "real TV" on ESPN was broadcasting a live spring-training baseball game, the mobile TV was showing "ESPN Rewind." The concept of live TV just means that it's not an on-demand service. Users get a program lineup and watch whatever program is on at the time.

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Verizon Wireless was nice (or smart) enough to hand out a bunch of mobile phones loaded with its V Cast Mobile TV service to journalists and analysts at the recent CTIA Wireless 2007 show in Orlando. I tried out the Samsung SCH-u620, if only for a few days (Verizon offered the TV service only during the week of the show).

The u620 is a small-unit slider phone, similar to the LG Chocolate in that the top part of the phone slides up to reveal the keypad (or the bottom slides out, if you prefer). Features include a 1.3-megapixel digital camera and camcorder, a microSD card slot, embedded speech recognition (with dictation for messaging) and Bluetooth (including the stereo headset profile). All of the other Verizon Wireless multimedia services, such as V Cast Music and Video downloads, are also on the phone along with the V Cast Mobile TV.

But the main feature of the phone is the ability to watch live TV. A pull-out antenna helps improve the network connection. During the test period, I could watch programs from three major broadcast networks (CBS, NBC and Fox), along with MSNBC news, Comedy Central, ESPN, MTV and Nickelodeon. The "channels" did not necessarily line up with the live TV offered on their regular networks - for example, while "real TV" on ESPN was broadcasting a live spring-training baseball game, the mobile TV was showing "ESPN Rewind." The concept of live TV just means that it's not an on-demand service. Users get a program lineup and watch whatever program is on at the time.

If studies about mobile-viewing habits are to be believed, most users will watch their mobile TV in bits and pieces - or as one company told me, "to fill in the cracks in their life." Examples include watching a video while waiting in a doctor's office or sitting on the train. But most live TV programs are at least 30 minutes long, and I'm not sure who's going to want to sit wherever they are for that long to watch a complete program. Maybe there's a demographic market that Verizon Wireless thinks will do this, but I haven't been able to figure it out. It's like that old adage, "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should."

Carriers have the technology to produce live TV on a mobile phone, but that doesn't mean I'm going to run out and buy the service. I have a mobile phone that allows me to download videos on demand, but the pricing of the service, along with the lack of interest on my part for watching videos on my phone, means I don't use the service on a regular basis. The same fate awaits the mobile TV service, unless Verizon Wireless can convince people that they need to watch TV on a tiny cell phone screen.

Verizon Wireless also better start making some network improvements. During the week I had the phone, I was able to see the "live" portion only a couple of times. Other times, it took a long time to load up the program guide, and several times I watched a show with an audio stream that didn't sync up with the video - video in this case was very choppy. But this was similar to my experience in the early days of the V Cast on-demand video downloads, so I'm sure this issue will be fixed in the future.