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Sona's video player for BlackBerry powers "bbTV"
Last time we checked in with SonaMobile, their video player was in beta and it was looking a bit, well, beta-like -- download times were hurting, video quality left a lot to be desired, and content selection was limited at best. Well, times are a-changin', and it looks like these guys are just about ready to flip the switch for Canadian BlackBerry users on Rogers, Bell, and Telus. So what's changed? For starters, Sona's claiming faster download times and reduced storage requirements thanks to an improved compression scheme, though you're still looking at a 3-5 minute download for a 1-2 minute clip. The commercial launch has also been renamed "bbTV," offering news, sports, and financial content from Canada's Global National, and they've added an archive feature for reminiscing about last week's... uh, news, sports, and finances. No word on launch plans outside Canada, though users are claiming it's easy enough to fool Sona's site into letting anyone download the goods; the only question is whether you want to put up with some pretty painful download times to watch exclusively Canadian content.
First look at Sona's BlackBerry Media Player
With every successive iteration, BlackBerrys move closer to the consumer mainstream, but they still lack a handful of features that would be considered common in a consumer-class device. On that ever-shortening list is support for streaming video, and as we told you a couple months back, Sona Mobile is looking to do something about that. Their Media Player appears to presently support the 7130 and 8700 series; it's still in beta form, and this user's first look verifies that, claiming it takes over four minutes to download a 1:30 video, slowing down the device significantly in the process. Reports on picture quality are mixed, but even if the videos crystal clear, download times are going to have to improve for the product to be anything but a novelty.
Sona BlackBerry Media Player will enable streaming video
RIM's effort to position certain BlackBerries as more consumer-oriented products received a big shot in the arm today, as Sona Mobile Holdings -- which may or may not be the same company that's supposedly developing a Star Trek-themed cellphone -- announced the first-ever dedicated multimedia player for the company's "latest generation of devices." Although very little will be known about the software until it's unveiled at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando next month, we do know that the so-called Sona BlackBerry Media Player will be able to handle streaming video, and that the first content provider will be CanWest Media Works. CanWest's offering will come in the form of a daily Sona Mobile BerryCast (their term for a wirelessly-updated podcast), which will deliver downloadable news clips to a user's device. Not even a screenshot is available yet to show you, unfortunately, but rest assured that we'll be all over this come May 16th.[Via BBHUB]
