Bitbop was announced back at CTIA and shown at WES as the over-the-air movie and TV streaming app to have on your higher-end BlackBerry smartphone, and today the streaming video app now available for download in beta form to BlackBerry users with a compatible smartphone. The Bitbop app will bring on-demand TV shows and movies to the masses through both 3G and WiFi data connections – think of it as a kind of Hulu app that costs $10 per month and offers an ad-free viewing experience.
Bitbop, which is backed by Fox Mobile, offers TV programming from a variety of Fox network stations, like The Food Network, A&E, CBS, TLC, MTV, and a bunch more, totaling 25 stations. You also get access to non Fox shows, like 30 Rock and The Office. For now, though, the Bitbop beta app only serves up streams from TV shows. Movies are said to be “coming soon” and will also work over your 3G cellular data or WiFi networks. From our experience with the Bitbop demo, all streams look decent, but you can definitely tell when the stream switches to the lower-resolution bitrate.
For your $10/month, Bitbop will deliver long-form TV and movie content to your handset. For now, only the BlackBerry Bold 9000, BlackBerry Bold 9700, BlackBerry Curve 8900, and BlackBerry Tour 9630 are compatible with the service. When using a 3G data connection, the video stream will be switch to a lower-resolution and lower-bitrate version that will allow you to keep the stream alive on slower 3G networks. On WiFi, the app will kick up to a higher-res stream to deliver an optimal viewing experience.
This is what Bitbop looks like in person:
So, the question is, dear BlackBerry user, are you willing to pay $10 per month to get TV shows and movies streamed to your BlackBerry? Android users, you game?
[Via: Bitbop]