Select ABC stations offering free video for mobiles
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 13th 2007 11:54AM
posted Jul 13th 2007 11:54AM
Sure, we've seen the local-news-on-your-handset card pulled out before, but unlike similar alternatives, this one should work with any network and on any phone capable of handling the video. A group of ten ABC-owned television stations have announced that they will be offering up "free video content" for cellphones, most of which will consist of ad-supported streaming news clips. The service will be powered by Local Wireless, and will be available to users near WABC-TV in New York, KABC-TV in Los Angeles, WLS-TV in Chicago, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, KGO-TV in San Francisco, KTRK-TV in Houston, WTVD in Raleigh-Durham, NC, KFSN-TV in Fresno, California, WJRT-TV in Flint, Michigan, and WTVG in Toledo, Ohio. You know the drill: give it a go, and post your adoration / gripes below.[Via Textually]
Here's the direct link to the Houston station:
http://www.abc13now.com/wap/video/cat.jsp?sid=25
From what I can tell its just a bunch of short clips, mostly in Windows Video file format, set to stream at a low frame rate...Not exactly "live".
I will hack on it some more later.
Works on the Moto Q. At least _something_ does.
how do you find the address for your local tv stations that will work on your phone?
Yeah, that information could have been clearer stated. Took me a little while to figure out that you access a list of cities and stations via http://www.localwireless.com.
Working on my w810i - but the Edge connection can't keep up.
Works fine on the Samsung Blackjack. Video quality is comparable to ATT/Cingular's own mobile video offerings.
Doesn't work on the Blackberry (darn you ABC!)
YouTube is working better for me than this localwireless thing.
Videos won't work for me at all on my N95 - clicking on the video link opens a new multimedia message with the stream url as the recipient. Could be a problem with the Nokia browser or just a coding mistake by Local Wireless.