I got a new mobile phone last night... for the last couple of years, I have been using a Motorola Q (Windows-based) "smart" phone but this time I went for an LG "multimedia" model.  I signed up for one of the Verizon "V-Cast" plans that gives me access to a limited number of television shows, sports clips, and other video content.   I haven't yet opened the instruction manual, but I have played around with it a bit and have some initial thoughts.

I've watched some clips from "The Office" and some college football highlights from last weekend.  I passed on the opportunity to pay $2.49 to watch the latest music video from the Jonas Brothers.

In general, the video quality on the phone was decent.  The picture size seemed to be slightly different from a traditional television set, so the picture seemed a little bit distorted.  Verizon has chosen to split their "full episode" version of "The Office" into bite-sized chunks of about five minutes each.  I think this is a good idea, as the viewing experience on the mobile device is great for a few minutes - I don't think I'd want to watch a full-length movie.

There was a noticeable difference in the video quality between the clip of "The Office" and the football game - in general, the frequent scene changes and dynamic action sequences of football make it inherently tougher to get right in any sort of low-bandwidth connection.  That just happens to be one of the problems with mobile video that we are solving in our work at Dialogic.

I'll keep watching, and will give you an update when I've finally opened the instruction booklet and have a bit more experience.  In the meantime, please let me know your experiences (and please share any tricks that I won't learn from the booklet!).