• PC World
• » Home Theater

LOS ANGELES -- Digital music and movies are making their way to mobile devices at a frantic pace. At IHollywood Forum's Digital Media Summit conference here this week, companies are unveiling services for delivering full-motion video to your cell phone, as well as showing new and innovative ways to bring audio and video content to your PC.

T-Mobile says full-motion video and sound will be available on the new Nokia 3650 wireless phone with the company's service. The announcement marks the first time a U.S. wireless carrier has offered full-motion video with sound on a cell phone.

The $199 phone will support RealNetworks' RealOne media player and service, which will also appear soon on select Pocket PC products. The service lets users stream live video of news and sports, as well as downloaded music, video clips, and movie trailers.

In addition, the Nokia 3650 features a built-in camcorder, VGA camera, and audio recorder. Users can record their own short videos, tap in an e-mail address, and send the clips across the country on T-Mobile's high-speed data network.

Movie News

Hollywood and the recording industry are very interested in putting their products--both video and audio--into your hands. Studios and labels are developing new ways to deliver movies and music to your mobile devices, as well as more-innovative ways to bring them to your PC.

For instance, this fall RealOne subscribers will be able to download and view full-length feature films from Starz Encore Group on their computers or TVs. Pricing hasn't been set, but for a monthly fee users will have access to many of the same movies available on the Starz cable network, RealNetworks says.

Users will download and play the movies, encoded in RealVideo 9, using the RealOne player. The companies will use Real's digital rights management technologies to prevent copyright infringement.

Another example: The upcoming DVD release of the award-winning documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown will include a second, better-than-DVD-quality disc. The high-definition format will work on PCs using Windows Media Player 9, says Dave Britton, Microsoft's director of marketing for Windows Digital Media.

Plus, Pocket PC Films, which distributes VHS-quality video programming for Pocket PC and Palm OS devices, this week added heavyweight film producer Warren Zide (American Pie and Cats & Dogs) to its advisory board to help it shape its filmed-content selection. The Pocket PC Films library includes more than 25,000 titles, covering all types of programming.

Audio Offerings

On the audio front, music subscription services--whose first attempts were largely shunned by PC users accustomed to free peer-to-peer file sharing--are trying to stage comebacks in a post-Napster world.

FullAudio recently relaunched its MusicNow service with a base of more than 200,000 songs and growing.

MusicNow features commercial-free, CD-quality radio stations enhanced with specialized groups of songs, called TrakPaks, chosen by informed programmers who give an audio explanation of the grouping and the songs' backgrounds. For instance, two featured TrakPaks this week are "God Bless America," with a collection of patriotic music such as Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA," and a "Protest" TrakPak that features tunes like "This Land is Your Land" and "We Shall Overcome."

For $10 a month, the MusicNow premium service also allows a user to listen to the music on a PC, download the music to a PC, or purchase individual tracks to copy or burn onto media for $1 each.

Unlike earlier music services, MusicNow says it is targeting an older demographic (ages 30 to 50). While this group traditionally has not been perceived as fans of digital music, the company is betting that the convenience of the service will woo an audience who never became attached to Napster and other free services, says Scott Kauffman, the company's president and chief executive officer.

MusicNow's relaunch follows the introduction of Yahoo's $40-per-year LaunchCast Plus service, and America Online's announcement last month of its own premium paid music service, MusicNet on AOL. AOL's service will enable its subscribers to listen to newly released music and copy it onto their own media for an additional fixed monthly fee--above the cost of AOL membership.

• See more like this:
• Hollywood,
• digital,
• music,
• movies,
• RealOne,
• Digital Media Summit,
• iHollywood,
• T-Mobile,
• Nokia,
• 3650,
• wireless,
• cell,
• phone,
• audio,
• video,
• Starz,
• RealNetworks,
• RealVideo 9,
• Pocket PC,
• Full Audio,
• MusicNow,
• AOL,
• MusicNet,
• Launch,
• Yahoo