Dutch NOS starts streaming news and 6 channels of live Olympics channels video for mobile phones

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The dutch NOS (national broadcast service) has now started streaming their news videos as well as live streams of the olympics for the mobile phone platform. At the same time they upgraded their mobile site and added a dedicated new application as a download option. It features an enhanced news experience including live video media streaming of the Olympics.

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Their all new refurbished mobile website now presents the topics news, sports, weather and traffic information. In addition the latest newsvideo broadcast can be streamed from the site directly onto your mobile device. On the Nokia N95 it is done using realplayer. The mobile site also features a download section offering a dedicated news application to be downloaded. For my N95 this was a properly signed *.sisx application.

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The dedicated news application the information of their mobile website and extra articles and videos. The interface is a bit more slick that their mobile website and features a 'news ticker' with the latest info. Additonally they are offering several video streams: the news in the last 24 hours,  the latest news, separate news items (about China, Birma etc..) as were already possible to view with the flash-enhanced webbrowser of the N95, live political streaming of discussions from the Hague (yuck) and upto 6 live streams from the Olympics and Roland Garros. The Olympic channel selection for the mobile consumer is now wider than that of the tv-consumer. The application installation went flawless though it did gave a message that it was, at the least, free until end of 2008. Let's hope it stays like that.

Upto now I was annoyed that the Brittish and the Germans could watch their national news broadcasts on the Nokia n-series but we as the dutch could not. In one step we are on par or perhaps even slightly better off ;-)

In the last few months I have seen an increase of dedicated mobile websites delivering to the point efficient information with only minor ads. Anything from cinema guides, TV-guides, weather, news to traffic information. Many of them I prefer over using RSS and the larger PC oriented sites. RSS often has randomly abbreviated information) bits luring you into going to PC-oriented sites with obnoxious popups, flashmovies or mindless jabber to get to the real bits. Mobile sites lets people reinvent the art of using limited screenspace useful.

I will regret the day my phone gains 1024x758 pixels of resolution.