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Idea: What if the Nokia N95 had TV in?

Categories: Ideas and rants
By: , IntoMobile
Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 1:36 PM

Davidhasselhoff
Currently you can hook up the N93, N93i and N95 up to a TV and output whatever content you may have on your phone. Imagine if you could record content from any source?

You would hook up your N95 to your cable box, satellite box, anything with a composite video output, set a time to begin recording and a duration.

If I get up early enough I can watch Knight Rider at 06:00 on Universal. Imagine if I could just hook up my Nokia to the receiver and tell it to start recording at 06:00 for 45 minutes. Then I can watch it whenever and wherever I like!

Stupid idea? Should people stick to torrents?

I know the TI OMAP 3430 has full dvd resolution encoding acceleration onboard thanks to the IVA 2+ accelerator.

We would need wireless USB if we ever wanted to share an hour long episode of Top Gear with our friends. Bluetooth 2.0 would be way to slow.

Nokia could sell a little set top box that would do the recording straight to a memory card that you could just pop right in to your phone.

I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

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About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • romeo26

    ur not the only one who wants this!! but i did alil searching and there are things that you can hook up to the tv and insert a sd card and record the tv!

  • viipottaja

    Fantastic idea, kinda like a mobile TiVo. Wonder how difficult that would be technology wise, decoding and such? Also, could maybe raise some DRM issues? Btw, wonder if anyone has tried to get SlingBox to work on a wifi phone?

    Something similar is probably going to be implemented in the “mobile-digi-TV-over-the-air” (forget the fancy accronym right now) that e.g. N77 has.

  • Alexandre Silva

    I would love it.

    Viipottaja, why DRM issues? You can record TV broadcastings in your VCR, right, so why shouldn’t we be able to do it in the mobile too?

  • viipottaja

    Yeah I know.. you’are probably right. As long as you don’t share it or post on YouTube etc. it should be ok.

  • viipottaja

    Romeo26, do you know if you can just plug that SD into e.g. a S60 phone with a Real Player or you need to some tricks? Can you give a link to one of those things?

  • cybette

    viipottaja do you mean DVBH?

    There’s going to be DRM issues, no doubt about it. Currently if you have OMA DRM v2 content, that you own and already paid for, well, sorry, you can’t output it via TV out.

    TV in? That’s gonna open a whole different can of worms. Operators would not like it, because they’d rather you be paying for traffic over their airwaves, or paying for DVBH services.

    Doesn’t TiVo have DRM in place as well? And is a paid service too? (I don’t have TiVo so I’m not clear on this.)

  • cybette

    I thought we’re talking about an “on-device” TV in?

  • Stefan Constantinescu

    cybette: i am talking about an onboard feature in a mobile. =P

    steve: i just read your review, awesome device. i would love it if nokia sold the exact same box but with their logo on it, a new media player and compatibility with all S60 devices. i would like it even more if they included this capability into the phone itself.

    viipottaja: the whole point of such a device would be to share ;-)

  • Deckard

    Does the N95 have an OMAP 3430? I’m pretty sure it’s an OMAP 2420.

  • Stefan Constantinescu

    The N95 does indeed have the 2420. I’m just giving people an example of what chips currently produced by TI are capable of.

  • viipottaja

    Steve, thanks! Do you think it would work without problems on a Nokia 770?

  • Stefan Constantinescu

    viipottaja: did you even read steve’s review? he links to some sample files you can download and try on your device to see if it is capable of supporting it.

  • viipottaja

    Stefan,

    no I did not yet (was busy attending to my 12 month old son’s needs first). Did I say I did? I’ll try those now.

  • Stefan Constantinescu

    Thanks again Al, Steve already linked to the review.

    I knew such a device existed in Asia but I didn’t know you could buy it stateside or in Europe yet.

    Pleasant surprise indeed.

    What I’m saying is “that little box” should be built in to a phone.

  • Jopo

    that can be done already with current phones and current sw. I know guys who have done that with N93. They record stuff from TV (pick what they want from tv-guide, DVB-T) and then change resolution to better fit to N93 and then push it to phone’s memory card automaticly.

  • mkomarac

    Yes!
    that would be nice.
    but I would be satisfied with an option to just view stream.
    I have DVD-player in my car, and need an soltution, to have Car monitor, just to preview image from In dash dvd player. not to record.
    that’s probably an easiest solution.
    does anybody know for that kind solution!?!?