Fox Mobile Launches Mobile Pay-TV Service for BlackBerry

Fox Mobile Group’s Bitbop mobile entertainment service for smartphones_launched this week with 66 TV series from major networks such as Fox, CBS, NBC, A&E, Food Network, Bravo, USA, National Geographic, MTV, Nickelodeon, History Channel and FX. The $9.99 per month “all-you-can-eat” service, available from BlackBerry App World, will be available initially for the BlackBerry Bold series, Curve 8900 and Tour 9630 smartphones and will roll out to other platforms and phones over the next few “weeks and months,” Joe Bilman, executive vice president, global products, at Fox Mobile Group, told Consumer Electronics Daily. BlackBerry was chosen as the first platform for the service because of its technical challenges and because BlackBerry users have fewer entertainment choices than other smartphone users, he said.

Each network offers a menu of 3-5 episodes at a given time, Bilman said, and the shows are front-line programs that typically are available within 24 hours of the original airing on broadcast TV. Full-length movies are expected to be available later this year. None of the content is deep catalog material, Bilman said. Consumers can try out the service over a seven-day trial period and subscriptions are available on a month-by-month basis. TV shows can be streamed or downloaded to the devices.

A 30-minute Bitbop program takes up roughly 40-50 MB of memory, well within the memory capacity of most BlackBerry devices, Bilman said, and content can also be stored on external memory cards. Streamed programs are sent at a variable bit rate which ranges from 150 kbps to 500 kbps, depending on the wireless connection. The service works over both 3G and Wi-Fi. Download times can be as little as 5 minutes for a 30-minute show or as much as 15 minutes, depending on connection, the company said. Downloads are available temporarily to users, the company said, with viewing windows varying according to network.

Content is protected and formatted for viewing on the mobile devices. The major networks feed the content to Bitbop, which encodes the programming to make it “mobile-friendly,” Bilman said. Bitbop adds digital rights management protection, he said.